


Everything It Gives, It Takes Away

by Blue_Jay



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Bisexual Female Character, Break Up, F/F, F/M, Female Scott, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gift Fic, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, POV Alternating, POV Multiple, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, Sharing a Bed, because of 3B
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-16
Updated: 2014-03-27
Packaged: 2018-01-12 16:06:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 56,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1191219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Jay/pseuds/Blue_Jay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scout McCall spends her high school years dealing with teenage girl problems. Examples include dating, friendly competition on the lacrosse field, and occasionally shifting into a werewolf. </p><p>You know, the usual stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blue_Velvet_Dark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Velvet_Dark/gifts).



> A lot of dialogue is taken directly from the episodes and slightly revised to deal with the change in character that comes with any genderswap. 
> 
> Blame this second genderswap story on the girl this is gifted to. She's evil. 
> 
> This spreads across all three seasons, but comes in four parts because 3A and 3B are split. Also yes, Scout is, in fact, a girl's name. But Scott isn't. It was the closest sounding that I could think of. 
> 
> As genderswaps also usual come with an actor/actress face claim, I wrote this entire thing imagining Maisie Williams.

They’re both ten, and sharing ice cream in the park while doing a project for Mr. Stein’s English class. “Is that a nickname or something, McCall?” Stiles asks, pushing his small plastic spoon through the chocolate coating around the vanilla ice cream. “Or is your name really Scout?”

Today’s hot for early May, even by California standards, and the chocolate is already starting to melt. “My dad really liked _To Kill a Mockingbird_ ,” Scout answers, and goes back to coloring in the blue of Katya’s eyes. They’re reading _Angel on the Square_ in class.

“Your parents named you after a book character? Sweet.” She smiles, head still down, because it’s not like she gets that often. Everyone thinks Scout’s a boy’s name. Then Stiles says, “It does sound like a nickname, though, you’ve gotta admit.”

She already knows, thank you very much. Everyone always tells her it makes her sound like a puppy. “Why’s it so important?” she says, and picks up a black Crayon to color in the pupils. “Is it ‘cause people don’t call you by your real name?”

He shakes his head. “Nah, mine actually kind of sucks,” he answers. “And it’s really long. At least Scout’s short.”

“That’s a good thing?”

“Yeah, sure. What if I need to call your name across the playground? Short’s definitely good.”

It takes her a moment to realize he made it sound like they were friends. Scout doesn’t usually have friends. Going out there and making them isn’t something she’s good at. So Stiles might be a little weird, and the only reason she might be talking to him is because they’re reading _Angel on the Square_ for school, but she’s in no position to pass up friends. Not when Mom’s constantly worried she’s not making any because of what happened with Dad.

With another smile, she says, “Yeah, I guess,” and Stiles Stilinski smiles back.

 

 

Five years later and Scout McCall is five foot even, one hundred ten pounds sopping wet, and can’t breathe without an inhaler. So really, Stiles shouldn’t blame her for grabbing a baseball bat. Or for not wanting to come along on a trek through the woods on a school night with lacrosse practice the next morning. Her asthma’s always worse when she’s tired.

“What were you doing that was so important anyway?” he asks, bouncing the light of the flashlight across the ground and the trees and somehow missing every single root and rock she manages to stumble over. “Picking out your outfit for the first day of school?”

She rolls her eyes and catches herself on a branch when she almost trips. “No, I was stitching up the mesh,” she says as she stabilizes herself enough to keep going. These shoes are too big and she really should’ve grabbed a pair that fit to go out on a midnight hike like this. Then, because Stiles turns around to shine the damn flashlight beam _right in her eyes_ , she adds, “I did that like three hours ago.”

Her friend laughs. “Watch out or you’ll start turning into Lydia Martin.”

“Yeah, and you still wouldn’t get a kiss.”

“Aw, c’mon, why’d you have to go and do that?”

Because she doesn’t feel like listening him derail into a speech about all the reasons Lydia Martin is the best person in the universe, she asks, “Do you even know which half of the body we’re looking for?” just to change the subject.

Stiles doesn’t even stop walking or seem ashamed when he answers, “Hadn’t thought of that.”

Oh, of course not. “What if the person who killed her is still out there?” she says, and he tells her he hadn’t thought of that either. “Comforting to know you thought this out with your usual attention to detail. You know, maybe the severe asthmatic should be the one holding the flashlight, huh?”

Before he even has time to answer, or she has time to use her inhaler, the cops are there and she’s got her back against the tree and Stiles is getting dragged away and this is one truly, spectacularly bad night.

At least it can’t get any worse, she thinks once the police leave, and starts the walk back to Stiles’ Jeep.

 

 

So dragging Scout out into the woods into the middle of the night? Awesome. Getting dragged back to the house by Dad without Scout in tow? Not so awesome.

Unfortunately, Dad sticks around the whole night, so there’s no chance he can leave to go pick her up. Nothing ever happens in this town, so the whole hey-let’s-go-find-ourselves-a-dead-body was pretty cool, but losing his best friend (who happens to be a very pretty, very small, very asthmatic fifteen-year-old girl) in a place where a murderer killed a woman in her twenties wasn’t such a good idea. He should’ve ratted her out. Sure, they both would’ve gotten in more trouble, but at least she would’ve been safe.

The next day she’s wearing a pairing of tight jeans that make her look _way_ too hot to be his best friend, which is probably part of the outfit she picked out last night, but the fact that the shirt she’s wearing is oversized, button-down, and one of his is a pretty big indicator of a last minute wardrobe switch. “It was too dark to see much,” she says, rolling it back down after revealing an alarmingly bloody bandage, “but I’m pretty sure it was a wolf.”

Oh, Scout. Oh, Scout and her utter lack of any research into the local area. “A wolf bit you?” he answers and she hums in agreement. Well, at least she’s not limping. “No, not a chance.”

“I heard a wolf howling.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“What do you mean, no, I didn’t?” she says, tightening the grip on her notebooks. “How do you know what I heard?”

As he answers, “Because California doesn’t have wolves,” he cuts her off from walking. She should’ve gone to her mom for help instead of bandaging it up herself. “It hasn’t in like sixty years.”

She still seems doubtful. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” he says. “California doesn’t have wolves.”

At least she doesn’t seem particularly disappointed, he figures, but it still catches him off guard when she tells him, “Well, if you don’t believe me able the wolves, then you definitely won’t believe me when I tell you I found the body.”

Screw wolves and other furry little animals with teeth, this is a dead body. “Really?”

“I’m going to have nightmares for weeks.”

He laughs. “That’s fucking awesome,” he says, and it really is considerably more awesome than leaving his friend for dead or worse in the woods in the middle of the night. “This is seriously going to be the best thing that’s happened to this town since the birth of Lydia Martin—hey, Lydia!” As usual, the girl walks straight on by, strawberry blonde curls bouncing and that _wonderfully_ short skirt swaying side to side. “You look…like you’re going to ignore me.” He turns back to Scout. “You’re the cause of this, you know?”

“Uh huh.”

“Dragging me down to your nerd depths.”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m a nerd by association.”

Nerd depths. It isn’t until Stiles says this that he realizes she hasn’t even seen _Star Wars._ “Shut up and let’s just get to class,” she says, and heads up the steps. “My side’s starting to hurt again.”

Oh, yeah, from the injury sustained by finding half a dead body. He’s _so_ heading back there after school, whether she’s coming or not.

 

 

Of every first day she’s ever had, Allison has to say that her one at Beacon Hill is probably the best. Or at least so far.

Seeing as she likes girls and all, at least the top tier of popularity has a tendency not to like her once they figure that out and because they don’t like her, no one else really likes her either—and that’s _without_ all the moving around she does. But Lydia, apparent most popular girl in school (not that Allison cares about popularity, but still, she _is_ a teenager), catches her looking at the small brunette who gave her the pen earlier and says, “Trust me, Allison, I haven’t known you all that long, but I’m thinking you can do better than Scout McCall.”

They got to the field early for Jackson’s practice, and it’s right as the female team’s try-outs end. The girl is talking to some boy also in a lacrosse uniform and has a smile on her face complete with raised eyebrows of exasperation. “Oh, him?” Allison says quickly, pointing. “I don’t—”

Lydia takes her hand by the wrist and repositions it so she’s pointing at the girl instead. “No, that’s Scout,” she says, and Jackson runs on the field and the rest of the female team runs off it, suddenly crowding around the two talking. “I don’t know the other one’s name. Supposedly they’re just friends. You can do a lot better than Scout.”

“So, you figured that I—already?” Allison says, uncomfortable now, because she hasn’t even told her parents. “And you’re okay with it?”

“Danny, the goalie over,” Lydia answers, motioning towards the boy in the goal as the male team’s try-outs start. “He’s gay. And Jackson’s best friend. Why should I care what you like? So, all girls, or both?”

Oh god, Allison thinks. Please let Dad keep me here for the rest of my high school career. “Just girls,” she says and, after a short pause, she adds, “Were her parents really cruel enough to name her _Scout?_ ”

“Believe it or not, Scout’s actually a girl’s name. It’s from a book.”

Allison watches as Scout cringes when that friend of hers messes up. With her hair all messy, she looks kind of like a puppy with ruffled fur. _You can do a lot better than Scout_.

Maybe, maybe not, but she’s willing to find out.

 

 

“So I was wondering,” Scout says before Allison can get back in her car, and normally she isn’t much of a risk taker but after everything she’s heard today, she might be willing, “is Friday night really family night or would you want to go to that party with me?”

Allison is wearing one of her shirts and because she’s so tall and Scout always wears the size too big, it’s only a little bit too small. “Family night was a total lie,” she answers.

Though Scout expects some sort of elaboration (that wasn’t exactly a one way or the other answer), she doesn’t get any. “Does that mean yes, you’ll go?”

With a smile, the other girl says, “Definitely yes,” and gets into her car.

The moment she rounds the corner, Scout calls up Stiles to let him know.

 

 

Mom straightens her hair and she tries not to think about what Stiles was going on about because every time she does, it starts freaking her out. Her reaction freaked her out pretty bad too. And c’mon, even if it were to work, she’s just barely five feet tall, how dangerous could she be as a werewolf?

Jesus Christ, she seriously thought that as an actual sentence.

As Mom works out the curly ends in the back, she says, “Is this a party or a date?”

Scout bites her lips together and fights back a smile. “Maybe both.”

“And her name is?”

The smile sneaks out anyway. “Allison.”

She’s under no illusion that she didn’t totally luck out with the best mom ever. When she told her she might possibly kind of sort of have a crush on the girl who sat two seats in front of her in science in eighth grade, Mom just sort of accepted it and asked if she should stop expecting grandkids named Stilinski yet. And Scout absolutely threw a pillow at her because really? Stiles is her best friend. It doesn’t matter that she likes boys too; the guy’s never had eyes for anyone other than Lydia for as long as they’ve know each other.

“Allison,” Mom repeats, and turns off the straightener. “Nice. So, is she picking you up or is she expecting _you_ to pick _her_ up.”

"Um,” she starts, and already has keys in her hand before she can finish. “Thank you.”

Mom leans over and kisses her cheek. “Keep the tank full,” she tells her. “Good luck, sweetheart.”

           

 

When Stiles finds Scout, she’s walking down the road barefoot in a sports bra and shorts short enough that Lydia would be jealous.

“You know what worries me the most?” she says when she gets in the car, curled up with her knees to her chest and wrapped in his button down because she always seems to be collecting his shirts one way or the other.

“If you say Allison, I’m going to punch you in head.”

But of course, _of course_ that’s it and to be perfectly honest, he can kind of picture why. “She probably hates me now.”

“I doubt that,” he says, “but you’re going to want to come up with a pretty amazing apologize.” Then he pauses, thinks about it, and continues, “Or, you know, you could just tell her the truth and revel in the awesomeness that you’re a fucking werewolf.” Scout gives him this look that says everything without actually saying anything. “Okay, bad idea.”

He tells his friend that they’ll get through this. She doesn’t quite laugh, but does something close enough to it to let him know she’ll be all right.

 

 

“I’ll be fine, Stiles,” she says for what feels like the hundredth time and it would be a lot more believable if her hands would stop shaking. “He’s—got a point, too, anyway. Shifting on the field? Bad idea. Getting a crossbow bolt to the arm once is enough times for me, thanks.”

Though she’s the one shaking, Stiles looks angry enough to actually hit something, which isn’t a sight she sees every day. “That doesn’t mean he can break into your room and press you against the wall,” he says. “I mean, that was screwed up. I couldn’t even see you in the Skype shot anymore, Scout.”

Yeah, yeah, it _felt_ like he couldn’t see him in the Skype shot anymore, too, if that even makes any sense. When Derek guarded her in the woods against those hunters—Allison’s _father_ —she hadn’t realized exactly how big he was. But shoving her against her bedroom wall from behind? Definitely showed her that she’s about half his size and he could probably snap her in two if he wanted to, werewolf powers be damned.

Running her fingers through her hair, she says, “Well, if you’re planning on staying the night to protect my virtue, then you’re sleeping because I want to sleep and if you’re awake, then I’ll be awake, so lie down. You don’t need to play watch dog or anything. Pretty sure I have that covered.”

He relaxes a little at that, but his whole body’s still tense. “Have fun waking up at five,” he tells her, settling in on the other side of the bed and setting his alarm so he can make it back in time for his dad not to realize he stayed over when they have school the next morning. “Night, Scout.”

She’s not sure if she’ll be able to sleep, but she shuts her eyes in an effort to try anyway.

“Night, Stiles.”

 

 

Derek hadn’t realized how bad he scared the girl until she takes a full step away from him when he goes to move closer.

He runs after he breaks the net on her stick but he hears loud and clear when she shouts, “If you want to protect me, there’s a better way of showing it than breaking into my bedroom!”

Huh. He didn’t think of that.

 

 

Before every boy’s lacrosse game is the girl’s lacrosse game against the same school’s girl’s team. Somehow, Lydia manages to find herself going to both. And what do you know, McCall actually is pretty good.

“You know,” she says to Allison once the latest bout of cheering has gone down, “the best player on the team is usually awarded captaincy. If McCall keeps this up, we’ll both be with—”

Her friend steps hard enough on her foot to actually hurt and gives Lydia a look that very clearly means her father doesn’t know. Oh. That was almost a very bad situation. When Danny came out, his dad was shockingly more supportive than his mom was, but that hadn’t been pretty to watch. No need to have something potentially similar happen in the middle of a high school lacrosse game.

The game ticks down to seven seconds left and McCall scores again. Oh yeah, she and Allison are _definitely_ going to both be dating lacrosse captains by the time this year is up. And maybe by then, her friend’s family will even know about it.

 

 

Scout’s never kissed anyone before. She’s got a stupid name thanks to her dad, isn’t exactly pretty, and tends to be known as the weird kid who isn’t smart enough to be a geek but not quite a loser either because she _does_ have that one friend. But right now she’s thinking that’s totally fine, because she’s only fifteen and Allison’s a good enough kisser to totally make up for it.

She feels like there should be dramatic music or something, because they’re in the shower of a dark locker room and Allison’s got her fingers curled in her chin length hair like she totally doesn’t care that Scout just came from a lacrosse game and is kind of sweaty. Her uniform sticks to her skin, too big so one shoulder keeps sliding off, and she wonders if her eyes will be glowing when she opens them because her heart is beating so loud she can hear it. No chapstick involved either, so it’s not like that stupid Katy Perry song that drove everyone insane for a year. God, she really fucking hopes no one comes in right now.

When Allison pulls back, she laughs, but they’re still so close their noses are touching. “I’ve got to get back to my dad,” she says, and gives her one last kiss on the cheek before backing away.

 

 

“Now there’s the cute little werewolf girl I know and love,” Stiles says after Allison literally _ruffles_ her hair goodbye, throwing his arm around her shoulders. “Smiling’s a good look on you. I ever tell you that?”

“Well, she’s fine,” Scout answers, smoothing out the creases on her shirt where they caught on her girlfriend’s (and she can’t believe she can actually use those words) notebook corners. “And the locker I banged into? Jackson’s.”

Stiles steers them into chemistry. “See, I told you everything would be all right,” he says, disconnecting them so they can take their separate seats because the teacher this year is evil and put them one behind the other instead of at the same lab table. Leaning forward, he adds, “You even got some petty revenge thrown in. Good start off to a Monday morning if you ask me.”

Yeah, she’d believe that if it weren’t for the fact that she still feels like her heart’s about to explode and something’s seriously wrong. “Maybe it was my blood,” she says, turning around, and from the look on Stiles’ face, she knows she just brought the mood way down again.

“Could’ve been animal blood,” her friend points out. “Maybe you caught a rabbit or something.”

“And did what?”

“Ate it?” Oh god, she totally didn’t need to think about eating a poor, helpless little rabbit. What if it was a baby rabbit? Or a mother rabbit with a bunch of baby rabbits waiting for her to come home? If stuff like that even happens with rabbits. As if predicting what she’s thinking, Stiles gives her the most exasperated look she’s seen on his face in at least three days. “What, you stopped to bake it in a little werewolf oven? Yes, you would’ve eaten it raw but I don’t know, you’re the one who can’t remember anything.”

Before she can say anything, Mr. Harris calls them out on talking and she’s conveniently placed in front of Jackson. Goddamn, and her morning had just been starting to going _so_ well.

 

 

If someone even two weeks ago told Lydia she’d be on a double date with Scout McCall as one of the doubles, she wouldn’t have believed it. But now here she is, because she can be a better friend than people expect when she wants to.

Though she does want to bring the poor girl on a shopping spree because most of her clothes seem to come from Stiles’ closet and that’s just wrong.

Allison whispers something in Scout’s ear and somehow that leads to a strike. “What did you say to her?” Lydia asks her friend once they’re both sitting back down.

“Oh, you know,” Allison answers, petting down Scout’s hair, “just gave her something to think about.”

Six strikes later and Lydia knows if they don’t do something soon, she and Jackson are going to lose and they really can’t have that, “natural talent” or not. And normally she’s all for dumbing herself down for her boyfriend’s sake, but he’s not the only one with a competitive side. Though she does feel a twinge of guilt at the look on his face when she says, “I’ll try this one on my own, thanks.”

But she doesn’t feel bad, five minutes later, when she admits it for the first time ever out loud to Allison. Jackson doesn’t hear it, but Scout does, and Lydia doesn’t like the shocked look on her face. The point was for her boyfriend to believe it, not everyone else.

 

 

When Allison drops her off, she kisses her at the front door and says she doesn’t really like group dates.

Which is great, because Scout doesn’t really like them either.

 

 

Derek had sisters, back before the fire, and they got into fights in their werewolf forms more than once. But none of them were quite as… _small_ as this newly turned here who also obviously has no idea what the fuck she’s doing. Well, welcome to the club, because he has no idea what the fuck is going on.

He slams her against the wall, the floor, scratches across her stomach deep, and gets her to turn back. Alphas usually have pretty good control, and Derek can’t figure out what its game is biting someone like her.

“It’s you, Scout,” he tells her as she looks up at him from her place on the couch, clutching at her already healed stomach like it still hurts though obviously it can’t. “You’re the one he wants.”

 

 

Though she hasn’t told her parents yet, Allison talked to Kate the moment she realized she liked girls and made her aunt promised not to tell Dad until she felt like she was ready. “Actually, there is someone,” she says. “A—girl.”

Kate pauses in her unpacking. “Do your parents your parents know?” Allison shakes her head. “Not even your dad?”

“We haven’t been here all that long,” she answers. “I don’t know what they’ll say. You know how they get about _boys_ they _think_ I’m looking at, imagine how they’d be if I told them I was actually going out with a girl. She doesn’t know they don’t know either.”

“Well, you better tell one of them eventually or you won’t like the fallout,” Kate says. “Can’t speak for your mom, but how many times do I have to tell you Chris won’t care?”

Objectively, she knows this, but she’s heard enough horror stories over the years and seen enough disasters on TV or in movies or read in books that she thinks she has right to be at least a little freaked out. “I guess you’re right,” she says eventually with a sigh. “Do you need any help unpacking?”

Kate’s hand lashes out suddenly and her grip is so tight it hurts. Almost immediately, though, she laughs it off. “See,” she says, “you turn out beautiful and I turn out with this kun fu death grip. Sorry, sweetie, I didn’t mean to be so rough.”

Though it’s probably going to bruise, Allison really doesn’t care. “No worries.” Then, after a moment, she remembers last night and adds, “Hey, is everything okay with your car?”

“Uh, yeah,” Kate answers, but the hesitation is more than obvious. “I just needed a jumpstart, that’s all.”

Okay, so it might’ve been two in the morning, but Allison distinctly remembers her dad saying Kate had a flat tire.

Half an hour later, newly showered and dressed, she heads to school and still feels unsettled, though she can’t figured out for the life of her why her family would lie about something that simple.

 

 

“So how long have you two been dating?”

Allison’s got her hand caught in a death grip under the table. Mr. Big Scary Werewolf Hunter figured it out pretty much immediately after seeing them in the garage, Miss Potentially Murdered Derek invited her for dinner, and Mrs. Obviously Doesn’t Like Her is now asking the questions. The words get stuck in Scout’s throat, so Allison answers, “For about the past month.”

The only person who’s heartbeat is steady at the table is Kate’s and everything’s so loud that Scout’s pretty sure she’s about to start panicking. Mr. Argent says, “And you didn’t feel the need to tell us?”

Even before they were actually going out, Scout told her mom. Actually, until the werewolf thing, she told her mom pretty much everything important enough that more than Stiles needed to know because it’s not like she has— _had_ —anyone besides the two of them. She can’t fathom the fact that Allison hasn’t even explained to her parents that she’s into girls yet because that seems like a pretty big Life Detail to leave out. “I thought I should maybe wait until the month mark,” she says. “Isn’t that what people are supposed to with their parents?”

“Well,” Mrs. Argent says, “if we’d known we would’ve implemented the rule where you aren’t allowed home alone together.”

“C’mon, Victoria,” says Kate with a tone that suggests an eye roll even though she doesn’t roll her eyes. “They’re _teenagers_. And they’re both girls; it’s not like Scout can knock her up.”

Allison squeezes her hand tighter and Scout chokes on her water. “Can I be excused, please?” she asks. “I need to—go to the bathroom.”

Though the lie is one hundred percent transparent, Mr. Argent takes pity on her and points her in the right direction. It takes a lot of willpower not to just run away, but she changes course of action last minute and decides to search for the magic bullet instead of spending her time panicking in the bathroom.

No one comments when she comes back a full ten minutes later.

 

 

She’s screaming at Stiles to do something because she’s too short to get the bullet herself once it falls through the grating and he’s trying and Derek’s unconscious on the ground and not waking up no matter how hard she shakes him and today was fucking _awful_ and—

It’s almost like not thinking when she only grows claws on one hand and slaps him across to face, leaving scratches deep on his cheek. Then he’s awake, Stiles has the bullet, and that was just about the textbook definition of control.

 

 

After Lydia and Jackson and the Alpha, Scout pulls herself through Stiles’ window, which he already left open for her. “You’re a lot sneakier now than you used to be,” he says once his heart rate slows and he shockingly _didn’t_ scream like a little girl. “Tie bells to your clothing or something.”

Right now she’s wearing pajamas, though pajamas for her as usual mean an oversized shirt and shorts from the GAP that Mom got her but she refuses to wear to school. Bells indeed. “Lowers the probability of your dad walking in and sending me home for sleeping over on a school night,” she points out, and Stiles grins. They’ve been sneaking around for years like this, but Mom’s less likely to send him home. “Anyway, I’m sure you figured out what Jackson saw wasn’t human.”

             
“Yeah, his definition was pretty specific,” Stiles says, “and by specific I mean vague, but that definitely wasn’t some mountain lion. So was it the big scary monster that wants you as his pet?”

With a nod, she says, “Derek called him an ‘Alpha.’ I guess that’s his way of showing off.”

“Ooo, kinky.”

She ignores him and twists so she can curl up on her side, put them face to face. “Can I stay tonight?”

He pulls up the blankets far enough with his foot that he can grab them and yank them up to their shoulders. “Bed’s big enough for two. What kind of guy would I be to turn down a pretty girl like you?” he answers. “Besides, it’s not like you haven’t already set your alarm for five.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Uh, yeah, I absolutely do.”

She smiles slightly and pulls up the blankets to cover the bottom half of her face. “I hate you,” she tells him. “See you in the morning.”

He says, “’Night, Scout,” and turns around to switch off the light.

 

 

Melissa is furious at her daughter for skipping school and missing the conference, sure, but she did _not_ just spend the past half hour getting accused by two separate people for being a bad parent in order to go let Scout wallow in her own misery.

“She said people are usually mean to her all day on her birthday because the moving around put her back a year,” Scout says, wiping across her eyes with the back of her hand. “I just thought it would make her feel better—and it did, ‘til we got back.”

When Melissa was younger, her dating life was a lot easier than this, she’s pretty sure. “Her parents will come around,” she promises, rubbing her daughter’s back between her shoulder blades like she did when she was younger. “Keep in mind they only found out about you less than a week ago, too. For some people…that’s not as easy as it is for others.”

One look at Scout’s face proves it was the wrong thing to say. God, maybe everyone is right because this definitely isn’t a Parent of the Year moment. “You have _no_ idea, Mom,” she says, but not in the insolent teenager way that means Melissa is supposed to be some sort of dinosaur. This really isn't something she can't understand, though she can try. “You weren’t at that dinner. Allison told me they both said they’re fine with whichever gender she dates as long as she’s happy, so I guess it’s just me they don't like her going out with. They probably hate me after today. Great, and now Stiles isn’t texting me back either.”

“No one could hate you, sweetheart,” she says, and kisses the side of her daughter's head. “Lie down. Nurse’s orders. I’m sure Stiles will get back to you about his dad soon.” He was always a better father to her than Rafael was. That’s your male authority figure, Mr. Harris, though she thinks she hasn’t failed as a parent quite yet. “I’m being serious. You’ll see both of them in school tomorrow.”

Before she leaves, Scout gives her a hug. “I love you, Mom.”

Oh, no. No, one of them crying is bad enough as it is. She is _not_ going to cry.

“I love you too.”

 

 

It takes thirteen texts from Scout for Stiles to turn off his phone. After all, it’s the better alternative than throwing it at the wall.

 

 

So Allison might totally have a thing for the fact that Scout is so small she can pin her to the bed no problem, which isn’t something she expected at all. Something she totally doesn’t have a thing for, though?

Kate knocking on the door interrupting them.

In the end, it doesn’t matter how cool the thing her aunt shows her is, because by that point it’s cutting time too close to dinner. “I better go,” Scout says as she retrieves her shirt from under the bed where Allison hastily kicked it. “Don’t need your mom or dad walking in to announce food’s ready.”

Usually they just yell, but after the incident with the mountain lion, she wouldn’t put it past her dad. Absolutely the kind of thing he would do. “Well, you’re coming around tomorrow, right?” she asks, watching with complete and utter sadness as her girlfriend pulls her shirt back over her head. Lydia wants the three of them to go shopping together and she isn’t as against the idea as she thought she’d be, all things considered.

Scout smiles. “I’d be a terrible girlfriend if I didn’t at least try.”

“I’m still amazed you got away without being grounded.”

Apparently leaving is forgotten for the moment, because she makes no movement to go when she says, “Grounding for me by this point means two things: no you, and no Stiles. Supposedly you’re grounded from everything and my mom doesn’t actually know how to say no to Stiles, so I’m actually almost impossible to ground.”

“That’s a little evil, I hope you know that,” Allison says and tries not to laugh because her dad will hear it if she does.

That smile noticeably falters a little before Scout answers, “Yeah, well, why else would you keep me around?”

“Maybe because I like to do this so much.” Allison leans down to kiss her and she pushes up to kiss back, which causes an awkward sort of fumble and fall backwards. Having Scout on top is pretty great too. “Hm,” she adds when her girlfriend tries to roll off, “I think we’ve got time for a little more.”

After all, half an hour isn’t actually cutting it _that_ close, right?

Then Scout’s got her mouth on her neck, and Allison really doesn’t care one way or the other.

 

 

Stiles knew he wouldn’t be able to stay angry with Scout for long, but he thought he’d be able to last more than two days.

After she hooks up the heart monitor that he may or may not have stolen, she says, “Have to say, I like your form of teaching better than Derek’s.”

“What’s Derek’s form of teaching?” he asks, going through his bag and looking for the duct tape because hey, he’s allowed some revenge here and there against his werewolf best friend.

“Uh, acting out psychological thrillers on me at random times in empty parking lots and then beating the crap out of me,” she answers, moving on one foot to the other uncomfortably. “I know I’m supposed to use pain to keep me in the moment or whatever, but—what?”

He stops his search because, okay, maybe petty revenge is a bad idea and if he’s going to figure out what Derek can’t, his methods have to be different. “Nothing,” he says quickly, slipping his hand out of his backpack and going for the lacrosse ball. “Just, pain? Seriously?”

“Well, I don’t think the point was for me to like it.”

Yeah, he gets that the whole transforming thing isn’t fun for her, but that’s a little extreme. There’s got to be something else. And he’s putting a thick black line through the idea of tying her hands behind her back with duct tape because she’s already been jumped in a deserted parking lot by a guy he’s still betting killed his own sister.

As he picks up his stick, he says, “Here’s the plan: you’re going to stand still over there in the field and I’m going to shoot. I won’t try to hit you, but no promises.”

She looks down at the ball in his hand doubtfully. “How will that help?”

“You’ll have a bunch of hard objects getting pelted at you,” he answers. “I’m not sure if you’re suddenly forgetting ten years of gym class, but that’s enough to rack up a heartbeat.”

Though she agrees, she still doesn’t look convinced.

In the end, he hits her more than misses her anyway even though he meant not to. But she keeps herself from shifting on the lacrosse field in broad daylight, which already means Stiles, one, and Derek, zero.

 

 

After a whole day of avoiding her, Allison finally gets her cornered in Coach’s class before Stiles can take her seat. “Hey,” she says with that stupidly big, amazing smile of hers, “I haven’t seen you all day.”

And since she’s a worse liar than Greenberg, all Scout can come up with is “Yeah, sorry, I’ve been busy.”

“When are you getting your phone fixed?” Allison asks. “I feel totally disconnected to you.”

“Uh, soon. Real soon.”

Earlier she’d told Stiles she’d rather be dead, and it’s true. It’s not just Allison, though—it’s him, it’s her mom, even Lydia and Jackson and every other person in this school idiot enough to talk to her. She doesn’t _want_ to end up like Derek. Even though she’s never had many friends, ever since she was ten it’s been ScoutandStiles as one person and she can’t imagine being completely alone. Not like that. Never like that.

Derek’s not going to be her future. Not if she can help it, and not if Stiles can too, apparently.

Somehow, through all of this, Allison is still smiling. “I changed lab partners by the way.”

She was paired with Danny before. “To who?”

“To you, dumby.”

Oh—oh, great. So much for staying away for a few days. A couple of days. Whatever it was supposed to be as long as it wasn’t forever. “Oh, really?” Scout says. “I mean, are you sure?”

“Uh, yeah,” her girlfriend answers. “This way I have an excuse to bring you home and study.” When Scout doesn’t answer right away, her eyebrows draw together and she adds, “You don’t mind, do you?”

Today keeps getting better and better. “I just don’t want to bring your grade down.”

When Allison says, “Well, maybe I could bring your grade up,” Stiles rolls his eyes. Jerk. “Come to my place tonight. Eight thirty?”

This is such a dirty move, Scout thinks, but she’s desperate, so she asks, “Are your parents okay with _me_ coming over?”

“Yeah, of course,” Allison says. “So tonight, eight thirty.”

Coach calls for attention and Scout turns back around, ignoring the looks Stiles keeps sending her way and Allison’s heartbeat. God, she is so screwed.

 

 

Even though Jackson makes it a point to hate pretty much everyone he meets, there’s something about the Stilinski-McCall duo in particular that just rubs him the wrong way. Allison, though? Allison he likes, though maybe that’s as an extension of Lydia picking a good friend for once. So he’s really not liking the cryptic text and the fact that she’s following it.

At least Lydia asks her about it, he figures. “I think my parents scare her,” Allison answers, looking down at her phone again. “I should’ve known something was up when she didn’t seem into the idea of coming over earlier.”

“So basically you’re saying she chickened out on you?” he says, glancing in the rearview mirror. Danny’s been stuck in similar situations a hundred times and last Jackson checked, he never backed down.

Lydia says, “Didn’t you say your parents are okay with it?”

With a sigh, Allison says, “Yeah, but she has it in her head that my parents hate her. The one time we ate dinner as a family Dad told a story about putting down a rabid dog. Then the next time they did sort of yell at her. In public. Right before she watched my dad shoot a gun.”

Jackson hadn’t been there for that, but from that he heard, it had been one hell of a night. “Still doesn’t give her the excuse to blow you off,” he says.

“You weren’t there,” Allison says, checking her phone again. “It was brutal. Honestly, I think I'd be freaked too.”

Mr. Argent gunning down a mountain lion was probably pretty brutal too. “Well, we’ll pick her up—and I guess Stiles—and bring you all back to my place,” Lydia says, which really pisses him off because it’s not like Jackson hasn’t noticed Stilinski eyeing his girl. “She won’t have a problem with that, right?”

McCall might not have a problem, but he does. Lydia keeps brushing Stilinski off and he trusts her and all, but still. No guy wants someone else flirting with his girlfriend. That, and McCall’s a bit of freak.

“No, she wouldn’t mind,” Allison says. “I think I’m going to talk to my parents about being nicer to her next time she comes over.”

When Jackson started dating Lydia, his parents liked her. Her parents liked him. And of course they all liked each other, because the two of them work; they’re both popular, everyone’s type, and get good grades. They’re the type of people who’re supposed to end up together. Allison and McCall aren’t like that, which is why they aren’t going to last. He’s calling that now.

They reach the school, and the doors are open with bolt cutters casually leaning against them. Jackson doesn’t say this often, but he’s got a really bad feeling about this.

 

 

Everyone who’s ever met the two of them knows Stiles has a protective streak a mile wide when it comes to his best friend, which is why, despite her having super awesome werewolf powers, he’s not so hot on the idea of her doing anything by herself. By herself as in alone. In a school with an Alpha who wants her as his pet.

“You’re a shrimp,” Jackson says before he can get anything in. “Just because you’re good at lacrosse doesn’t mean you can take on a murderer.”

Scout’s whole body goes tense and Stiles puts his hand on her shoulder before she can start the freaking out process because that was bad enough before she had claws that could tear all of them to shreds. Violently. “You don’t know where the janitor is and I do,” she answers. “Besides, I’m the fastest out of all of us and small body means smaller target, right?”

“I’m coming with you.”

“Stiles—”

“No, no, this is insane,” Allison says as he goes to accept the Molotov cocktail because yes, he knows he’ll probably be no help, but if she’s going to die, he’s willing to make sure they go down together. “You two cannot go out there.”

Scout glances between the two of them. “We can’t just wait here for Stiles’ dad to check his messages.”

“You could die.” Allison leans across the lab table and if there’s anyone here who can get it through Scout’s head that this is a really bad idea, it’s her. “Don’t you get that? He’s killed three people.”

They argue, Allison calls her a terrible liar (which she is), they kiss, and then Stiles finds his best friend’s hand in his, tugging him along because there’s no way she’d be allowed along without him. Honestly he thinks it’s a little ridiculous that Jackson, defender of all things masculinity, is letting her leave with just a “you’re short” comment thrown in her direction.

But then she’s all, “Wait here,” while she slips into the gym alone and he’s stuck outside just, well, _waiting_ —until the howl, followed by the scream.

He makes it in time to find Scout on the floor, contorting like a seizure and straight up human screaming. “Hey,” he says, sliding across the floor until he’s next to her, gripping at her shoulders and trying to hold her down. “Hey, it’s just me, just Stiles, gotta calm down or you’ll shift, Scout.”

Somehow her hand manages to grip around his wrist in a way that will absolutely bruise tomorrow and when she makes eye contact, her irises are glowing yellow. “You’ve got to get out here, Stiles,” she tells him, but her voice sounds strained. “He—did something. I’m—I’m—”

“ _Allison’s_ in here,” he cuts in because fuck if she thinks he’s leaving. “Think about Allison, Scout. You said you love her, right? Can’t protect her if you shift, you’ve got to hold on to that. You know, that day in the woods, the fact that you sneak through her window to see her, she kissed you in a damn locker room shower, beat Jackson and Lydia in bowling with her, come on, you can do, I know you can, just think about Allison, this guy don't control—there you go.”

It’s subtle, but she does start to relax, and since he can feel her heartbeat below his hand, he can tell when it starts to slow, too. When she does finally twitching, and her heart rate’s back down to normal, she still doesn’t let go of his wrist and he doesn’t let go of her. “I totally don’t deserve you, you know that? You’re such a good friend, I don’t know how you put up with me,” she says, leaning her head to the side so it brushes against his knee and the Alpha’s still in here, so they should probably get moving. “Thank you.”

He moves the hand she isn’t holding to move her hair out of her face because she’s starting to look ridiculous. Somehow, he stopped her from shifting by just talking. Sure, talking about Allison, but still, all he did was talk. He wonders if that makes him an anchor, too.

 

 

As Scout’s never dated anyone before, she’s never dealt with heartbreak either, and it’s every bit as bad as every Taylor Swift song makes it out to be. Combine that with being a freak, the full moon, and the fact that the Alpha wants her to kill all her friends, and the mental breakdown was inevitable.

When Stiles finds her, she’s huddled up in the girl’s locker room showers because it’s the only place she feels like she can hide. “Well, you tore your shirt to shreds,” he says once he calms her down and she makes him promise to do more than lock her up later. “Have my top one.”

“This is why everyone thought we were dating for two years straight,” she says, wiping at her eyes but putting on his shirt anyway. “I think half my shirts are yours by this point. I should be paying your dad back.”

“Yeah, and thankfully half my shirts aren’t yours,” he answers, and does the top buttons while she does the bottom ones with shaking hands. “Just return it and I’m sure my dad won’t mind.”

Allison’s going to have to see her like this, she realizes, and that doesn’t look good, wearing his shirt right after they break up. She doesn't want people assuming they're together again. What no one realizes is that being together would never possible because she’s a full three inches too short with the wrong color hair and the wrong color eyes. “We have to go to the nurse’s office if we want to be able to make up that test,” she says. “Come on.”

Before they go, Stiles pulls her into a hug. “I’ll stay the night,” he says, “and you and me? We can figure out anything.”

She thinks about the night before, and what the Alpha did to her, and really hopes he’s right.

 

 

Of every bad thing that’s happened today, Scout decides to take five minutes out of her wallowing in misery to actually be happy and throws herself Stiles. “I made team captain,” she says, clinging on to him. “At least I made team captain.”

“And I made first string!”

So today has basically been the worst day of her life, but she’s willing to give herself this.

 

 

_Wolf’s bane._

Fucking _wolf’s bane_ is what was inside him. Normally Jackson is all for skepticism, but no, McCall’s been too weird. Too fucked up. He doesn’t care how good the girl’s lacrosse team gets really, but he knows an unrealistic skill difference when he sees it and as someone who practices _a lot_ to be as good as he is, it really pisses him off. Not to mention she screamed so loud that night she actually _may_ have gotten him to worry (just a little of course, and that’s a secret that’s following him to his grave) and then dodged any and all explanations as to how she came back without a scratch.

So yeah, maybe he’s willing to believe that she’s a werewolf. And maybe he’s even desperate enough to ask for the power boost himself, because he’s not letting some girl feather light to beat his ass in anything—especially by cheating. Life just doesn’t work that way and it’s time for her to realize it.

It helps that McCall is stupidly, hopelessly in love. There’s no other weakness in the world easier to exploit, and he’s willing to do it without an inkling of shame.

 

 

Scout comes to him in need in need of hugs and calming down. Again. If Stiles had werewolf powers himself, he’d break his friend’s No Killing People rule and rip Jackson to shreds. Very slowly and very painfully, if he had to.

Because no one fucks with Scout (except maybe Derek because Stiles can’t do anything about it, and even that’s a stretch).

The moment no one’s looking, he drags her into Coach’s office. “Shh, you’re okay, the dude’s human, he can’t do anything,” he says, pulling her into a hug. “Besides, you think Allison would really believe him? Be real here, Scout.”

She drops her head to his shoulder, curls her fingers in the hem of his shirt. “I guess,” she says after a beat. “He’s just really intense, you know?”

When it comes to Jackson, intense doesn’t even begin to cover it. “I’m on the same lacrosse team as him. Trust me, I’ve noticed.” After she doesn’t answer right away, Stiles continues, “Look, for now focus on getting the necklace, okay? Considering how bad you’re freaking out right now, I suggesting you go with the steal it approach.”

“That feels seriously dirty.”

“Best possible option, Scout.”

Most of the time, he’s the more realistic of the two, even though most people don’t expect it for some reason. And he knows that if she tries the nice way, which for her is the awkward way, and Allison turns her down, the whole “anchor” thing will fall apart pretty quick. Or, okay, really quick. Uncomfortably quick. Definitely ups the possibility of shifting, but he’s not going to say that to her unless he has to.

Then she goes on the balls of her feet and kisses his cheek. “I’ll have it by the end of the day.”

“I’m holding you to that.”

“Shut up, Stiles.”

And he trusts her because she’s his best friend, which means she won’t get it wrong.

 

 

Coming to Scout McCall wouldn’t be her first choice on normal occasions, but this isn’t something she can go to Allison for. While she might love the girl to death, she’s the one who did the breaking up in her own relationship and clueless to the situation or not, definitely helped lead to the Jackson break up. So Scout it is.

She holds out the Ben & Jerry’s Rocky Road frozen yogurt when her not-quite-friend answers the door. “It was over a _text message_ ,” she explains fifteen minutes later, sitting in the McCall kitchen and stabbing a spoon into the carton. “How messed up is that?”

Despite dealing with a recent breakup herself, Scout’s sympathy seems shockingly genuine. “I can’t even imagine doing that,” she answers, and joins in with a spoon of her own. “You know, I didn’t do the whole frozen yogurt straight out of the carton thing. Boys aren’t really into that and it’s not something you do alone.”

Oh, jeez. Lydia hadn’t even thought of that. And this whole time she’d been telling Allison she was making the right choice. “So you really only have Stiles?” she asks.

Scout ducks her head down to avoid eye contact and it doesn’t take even a mediocre knowledge of psychology to know she’s embarrassed when she says, “It’s just been me and Stiles since we were ten. Then I met Allison, and you guys. Then I lost Allison, and you guys.” God, even her grammar is terrible. Lydia almost forgot about that for a moment. “Why here? Why not her?”

“Because for the past few days I’ve had to watch Jackson flirting with her,” she answers and doesn’t even get why she’s admitting to it. “I just don’t understand. I can tell when he’s into a person and he’s definitely into her, so why is he doing it? Just to piss me off? What did I do _wrong?_ ”

“I don’t think it’s you,” says Scout immediately. “I mean, I don’t know either of you that good, but I’ve watched him play lacrosse for over a year. He just acts more pissed off about everything than he did last year. Or at least I think.”

“Oh and he’s a _total_ dick to you.” Stiles Lydia can understand, but usually he reigns it in more for girls. “You know what? I don’t care. All I want is a movie and frozen yogurt  and to maybe bring you out shopping because you need a bigger wardrobe than Stiles’ shirts.”

Scout blinks and stabs at the frozen yogurt again. “Are you sure?” she asks. “This is me you’re talking about. I don’t want to damage your reputation.”

The fact that she says it without a hint of irony or sarcasm is almost scary. Talk about self-esteem issues. “Then we better go before I start caring again,” Lydia answers, and gets up to put the frozen yogurt in the freezer. “Are you ready?”

After a short scramble to get her house key and debit card, Scout McCall is, in fact, ready to go shopping. Lydia so hopes this isn’t a terrible decision and no one from school sees them together. She’s not prepared for that sort of embarrassment.

 

 

“I’m just thinking of my daughter’s safety.”

Allison freezes right before she can enter the room because she’d even recognize Scout’s profile from anywhere and what the fuck is she doing here? And even more surprising is when her ex-girlfriend suddenly says, “Will you believe me if I said I think about it too?” She stands, and as Allison ducks behind the wall, she can perfectly imagine Scout running her fingers through her short brown hair. “When we were in the school, every choice I made, every single thing I did was to make sure she was safe. I’m five feet tall, no inches added. I barely break one hundred pounds. Do you really think I’d risk it if I didn’t care about her?”

There’s a pause before Dad says, “I think you should go. You don’t want to be late for your game.”

After the front door clicks shut, he calls her in. “I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I couldn’t figure out how to get in without interrupting you.”

He doesn’t seem angry, though. At least there’s that. Then he rocks back slightly on his heels and says, “We can still make it to the game even if you want to stop and shower.”

It doesn’t even take a moment’s hesitation before she hugs him tightly because she might not have heard every word, but she heard what counts and somehow he understands. “Thank you,” she says, and it feels like when he said he all he cares about is that she’s happy all over again.

“For what? Giving you a ride?”

“Yeah,” she answers, but both of them know it’s a lot more complicated than that.

He let her hear, and he didn’t have to.

 

 

The moment she comes in contact with the Alpha, Scout backs up straight into Derek and quickly jolts away from him. He never made her feel safe in the first place, but now? He’s with _him_ but before he was with _Stiles_ and Stiles isn’t here. Stiles wasn’t out on the sidelines when the men’s game started, either.

Oh, God. If he’s hurt, then it’s all her fault.

“Maybe,” the Alpha says, drawing nearer as his claws grow and at the entrance he isn’t in is Derek, which means there’s nowhere for her to run, “you should try to see things from my perspective.”

Before she has the chance to dodge or scream, his nails are at the back of her neck. Her last thought is the very teenage focused _why me?_ and his mind takes hold of hers.

 

 

When Stiles reaches the girl’s locker room, completely bypassing his only ever first string game because holy shit, he just found the big scary bad guy, Scout’s standing in the shower wrapping herself in a towel. “Derek’s helping him,” she says, following him over to her bag so she can grab her clothes. “Guess you were right to have trust issues.”

Well, yeah, obviously, but he’ll save all the I Told You So moments for later when there _isn’t_ something invading his friend’s head trying to get her to kill him. And everyone else. “I’ll stay over again,” he tells her. “Make sure he doesn’t make you skip out in the middle of the night. I was going to make a Force joke, but you still haven’t seen _Star Wars_ , have you?”

 “You don’t need to have seen _Star Wars_ to know what the Force is,” she answers, putting jeans on under the towel and bra over it before letting it drop as if he hasn’t walked in on her in the shower three times already. “And you shouldn’t. What if he does do something and I hurt you?”

“Hey, snapped you out of it before with my awesome powers of friendship, remember?” he says. “Come on, you don’t really think you can plan an epic defensive move without me, do you?”

Even though she frowns, she still says, “Yeah, I guess. Then let’s get out of here. There aren’t enough people for me to be comfortable staying,” and pulls on her t-shirt. She doesn’t look so Lydia-ified right now.

Pleased to have won without much of an argument (her house has better coffee too, which is good for all night planning), he steers her out the door by her shoulders and wonders what type of person actually decides a cripple would be an entertaining cover.

 

 

Sending however many bolts of electricity this thing has into her ex-girlfriend’s chest isn’t how Allison wanted to spend her afternoon, but Scout seems to be fine, so at least there’s that, she figures. “What were you doing here anyway?” Allison asks as she pulls herself up by her elbows. “Were you following us?”

With Scout doing the whole wide-eyed thing and her hair as floppy as it usually is, she looks like a complete puppy and Allison is seriously debating getting back together. “No!” she says quickly. “Not at all. Your dad said you run this trail sometimes and I was hoping to catch you alone.”

Even though it really shouldn’t be, it’s actually adorable how clueless she is. “By following me,” Allison says.

“Well…yeah. I guess.”

“What for?”

Scout scrambles to get something out of her pocket. “I found this at school,” she says, withdrawing her hand, and when she opens it, there sits the necklace Allison’s been tearing her room apart looking for.

“Thank god,” she says in total relief. “I was starting to think it was stolen.”

Smiling, Scout answers, “No, just lost. Definitely not stolen by anyone.”

Allison slips it back over her head so the familiar weight sits against her chest. She’d been dreading having to tell Kate she didn’t know where it was. “Well, thank you for finding it,” she says. “And for bringing it.”

Then Scout asks, “You don’t think I’m a total stalker now, do you?”

Clueless, clueless, clueless. “No,” she says with complete honesty since apparently she has a tell and all. “I just think you’re weird. Like you always are.”

Scout sits up fully and Allison moves in to hug her, almost knocking both of them over but miraculously managing not to, until the other girl hugs her back. Neither of them say anything, even as she gets up and leaves, because sometimes it’s just easier that way.

 

 

Allison is still waiting in her room when she comes running back upstairs.

“Okay, so I’m about to seem like a total bitch,” she says, running around to get on her shoes and her jacket, “but can you wait here? I’m going to try to make this quick. I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t an emergency.”

When Allison says, “It’s all right,” she sounds so miserable Scout almost drops everything right there to sit back down.

“No, look, I really want to talk to you,” she says, sliding back into her seat for just a second as she pulls on her shoes. “Actually, there’s nothing I want to do more. But you know the guy my mom just went with?”

"Yeah?”

“Well, he kind of cornered me in the locker room earlier—”

“ _What?_ ”

“Nothing happened!” she adds quickly, but something mildly close to the truth is probably the easiest way to get her to stay. “But, look, I called Stiles because his dad’s home so he could tell him, and I’m just going to quick run off and make sure everything’s okay so if you can _please_ stay here, I’ll be right back and then we can talk. Just—it’s my mom.”

Allison says, “I’ll come with you. I brought my car.”

“No,” Scout answers. “Like I said, already called Stiles for his dad. Less people involved the better. This way’s faster and I probably should’ve just said something but I froze up and ugh, this is such a disaster.” Against her better judgment, she leans down and gives Allison a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be right back,” she repeats, and then she’s gone.

And to think Jackson really believes the bite would improve his life.

 

 

After an hour, Scout still isn’t back. Allison writes her a note saying to get home because of her curfew, but she hopes her mom’s okay and she’s willing to finish talking tomorrow.

For some reason, she leaves with a seriously bad feeling settled in the pit of her stomach.

 

 

At the sound of Peter Hale’s voice, Scout curls up in the corner of the office near where she spilled a bunch of chemicals two days earlier and holds her breath to see how long a werewolf can manage it. She’s not okay with dying. She’s not okay with Stiles dying, or Mom, or Allison, or anyone, really, and there’s a bullet wound in her side and Derek let himself get captured because of her. So much for being evil. He fails at it pretty hard.

For some reason, Peter doesn’t get through. He does, on the other hand, threaten her with Allison, and that’s really starting to get old.

After he leaves, Deaton comes and finds her. “I think you’re safe for today,” he says, offering out his hand and she doesn’t need it, but accepts it anyway. “Get on home to your mother. I’m giving you the night off of work.”

She nods shakily and leaves through the back exit. Her mom is at the hospital, which is closer, but she heads for Stiles instead.

 

 

Lydia bumps into Scout in the pink section while Stiles puts back all the other ones she picked up. “Allison is wearing silver,” she says, taking one look at the actually cute dress in the other girl’s hand. Looks like she made an impression. “Another color that light won’t go. Besides, you have darker skin; it’ll wash you out.”

“I’m not going with Allison,” Scout answers without turning around, but she does put the dress back on the rack. “I’m mostly just looking because Stiles is preoccupied and there’s nothing else to do.”

Well, that’s complete bullshit. She might not be _going_ with Allison, but Lydia is so ready for the two of them to get back together just so she can have the chance to at least catch Jackson alone for once. “Yes, Stiles,” she says, and steers Scout in the direction of the blues. “My date.”

They stop in front of the dark semi-formals. “I know he’s only slightly less weird than me,”  Scout says, picking at a single strap, “but at least give him a chance. Is this okay? Why blue?”

“Because it’s your color.” Lydia ignores the Stiles comment because she doesn’t want to admit he isn’t really as bad as she thought he was. One of the reasons she decided to start pretending to be an airhead was because no one could keep up with her, but he’s smarter than he looks—though about as geeky. Probably weirder than Scout, if anything. “You have good enough shoulders to go for strapless.”

Over the intercom, a woman’s voice calls for Allison’s car. “You better go,” Scout tells her, taking the dress. “I’ll see you at the dance.”

Stiles rounds the corner, phone clutched in one hand. If she isn’t wearing a dress that matches silver tomorrow night, Lydia is so going to kill her.

 

 

From the way her heartbeat speeds up, Derek knows the exact moment Kate figures it out. And with her imagination as sadistic as it is, he doesn’t even want to think about what she’ll do. This is the bitch that burned down a house filled with innocent people—werewolves and otherwise.

“It’s not Jackson, is it?” she says, turning around and the moment he gets out of here, he’s first ripping Peter’s face off, then hers. “The small size—that wasn’t from crouching down. He’s got that little scratch on the back of his neck, but he isn’t in love with Allison. Not like Scout.”

Kate Argent’s already fucked over his life beyond compare; Derek isn’t letting her ruin some other innocent kid’s, too.

 

 

Melissa does her daughter’s makeup because she might have suddenly grown an interest in fashion, but she’s still hopeless when it comes to applying eyeliner. She’s also wearing heels, which hopefully isn’t a disaster waiting to happen, because Scout’s never worn heels in her life.

As much as she likes this Allison girl, she can’t help but ask, “Why aren’t you going with Stiles?” because she’s still holding out on the hope for grandchildren with the surname Stilinski.

“Lydia asked him,” Scout answers. “You know, the girl he’s been in love with since the third grade? That Lydia.”

“The little redhead?”

“‘Strawberry blonde.’” It’s her Imitating Stiles voice. “Anyway, I don’t know. We’ll all still be together. I just won’t have a date.”

In high school, Melissa wasn’t usually the girl without the date and she doesn’t understand how it isn’t the same with her daughter. Lately she’d been having some trouble, sure, but she’s still one of the sweetest kids anyone could ever meet, and that’s not just a mother’s opinion talking. “No one else to ask?” she says. “Or is it only Allison?”

Biting her bottom lip, Scout says, “There’s no one else besides her,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

Melissa finishes up her daughter’s makeup and pulls the eyeliner away. Perfect. “Are you sure?”

“Mom—”

“Do you really feel that way?”

She sighs and Melissa takes a seat next to her on the bed, pushing the light away so it doesn’t shine in their eyes. “I can’t help it,” Scout answers. “I mean, every time I look at her I get this hollow feeling in my chest and it’s like someone literally took a shovel and dug a hole into me. It’s the worst feeling I’ve ever had in my life. I didn’t know anyone could actually ever feel this bad.”

Oh, young heartbreak. “I know,” she says, patting down some of flyaway hairs near Scout’s bangs. “Everyone feels it eventually. It does go away.”

“But I don’t want it to.”

“Have you told her how you feel?” she asks because she knows her daughter and her daughter never really grasped the concept of expressing herself. The child psychologist Melissa sent her to after the divorce said it was an inevitable side effect, but with enough counseling should go away in a few years.

They didn’t keep her in counseling.

When Scout answers, “She knows,” it comes out as a mumble.

Melissa hits her with the flat of her palm on the forehead and feels no shame for it. “Scout, you’re a girl, too,” she says. “What do you like better: guesswork, or someone actually saying it? You have to tell her for her to know for certain. Just go out there and tell her everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything, Scout.”

She stands and her daughter follows suit, managing not to tip forward on her shoes, which means Melissa may be underestimating her. Like this, Scout is only a couple inches shorter than she is, and this is her first ever school event outside of a lacrosse game.

“Come on,” she says, and gives her a kiss on her forehead. “Let’s get you to that dance.”

 

 

When Coach spots her, she does the first thing she can think of and goes for Allison, cutting straight in front of Jackson. “Dance with me and make it quick,” she says, and her ex-girlfriend’s got her arms around her without a hint of protest.

Coach appears a moment later. “McCall, you’re not supposed to—” he starts off, but then the music stops and everyone is staring and yes, one of her plans independent of anyone else actually worked. He beings sputtering off explanations, but ultimately sticks with, “Dance, everybody! Dance! It’s a party, just dance!” before running off to leave her alone.

On Monday she is so getting in trouble, but hopefully it’s worth it. At some point during that excursion, Jackson scrammed too. Allison’s even wearing flats, which means that since Scout’s five four in heels, she actually goes past her chin. “What?” Allison asks, and Scout realizes she’s been staring.

“Nothing,” she says, trying not to blush because that’s just even more embarrassing. Then, remembering what Mom said, she adds, “Just hard not to look at you.”

Everything. Yeah. How the fuck do you admit you’re a werewolf? Because that’s a pretty relevant piece of information by this point.

Allison tilts forward so their foreheads touch. “I like it when you look at me,” she says, and quirks up one side of her mouth.

“I kind of love your smile.” It slips out by accident, but hey, everything, right? And time to quite possibly face the music and end all this before it can even start up again. “Allison, I need to tell you something. Remember when we were talking in my room the other night—”

“Oh, you don’t have to apologize,” Allison says quickly. “I mean, you got my note, right? And Stiles told me about the car accident—”

“No, it’s not that.” This is a bad idea. Such a bad idea. Why did she think this was a good idea? “Uh, it’s about Derek. And it’s about everything you were trying to tell me—”

But Allison is already shaking her head and Scout might not be an expert on reading people or anything, but she’s pretty sure this means the other girl knows, which makes everything a lot more complicated. “No, forget about that,” she cuts in. “I didn’t know what I was talking about.”

Please don’t shoot me, Scout thinks, and immediately feels guilty for it. “I do. I believe you.”

“You don’t have to.” Allison takes a step back, hands settling on Scout’s hips now instead of around her waist. “I know things now. Things are different. Just…trust me.”

“Well, you weren’t wrong.”

“Yes, I was,” she answers. “Some of the stuff I was saying was crazy—”

“Allison, please, just let me talk.”

She’s not Stiles, she can’t talk a mile a minute, so it’s not something she normally says, and Allison instantly shuts her mouth, which also doesn’t seem good. There’s an awkward moment where neither of them will look at each other and Scout can’t think of how she’s supposed to explain anything, so eventually she goes for the safe option and kisses her instead.

Once she pulls back, Allison asks, “Why did you do that?”

“Because I love you.”

Her girlfriend—or at least hopefully her girlfriend again—smiles, grips her hair, and pulls her into a kiss because sometimes things are allowed to go right.

 

 

Tonight was supposed to be perfect. Tonight she was supposed to tell Scout she was ready for the two of them to start going out again. She had, under no circumstances, expected her girlfriend to turn out to be a _werewolf._

“It’s the bite that makes them evil,” her mom says once she agrees to stay quiet. “They lose control, they shift, they kill someone. But I think that for the most part Scout was just a normal, confused teenage girl who never meant to hurt you.”

Allison knows her mom’s saying it to make her feel better, but it only makes her feel worse. Because Scout might not have wanted to hurt anyone, but the Argent family definitely wants to hurt her.

 

 

“Allison, I can explain!”

Over the years, Derek’s seen a lot of shit, but he’s not ready to watch history repeat itself. And she might not have a house of family members to burn down, but Scout has a mother and a best friend and since he’s got an arrow in his leg and one in his shoulder, the thought of it is almost hysterical right now.

“Stop lying,” the other teenager says, coming closer as Scout squints because she and her idiot friend spent more time distrusting him than listening to him so he wasn’t able to tell her about the flash. “Stop lying. For once, just stop lying.”

Scout drags herself away by the arms. Did she get hit? Betas can’t have packs, but since he’s planning on killing Peter, he wants her on his side and protecting her was a pretty damn good way to get her to like him. “I was going to tell you at the formal,” she says. “I was going to tell you everything. ‘Cause everything that I said, everything that I did—”

“Was to protect me.”

“Yes!”

He said that to Kate and she turned around and burned his house to the ground. “I don’t believe you.”

Then the bitch herself appears from beyond the trees and well, it’s time to start the very painful process of ripping out Argent arrowheads because Scout’s just a kid. Even if it weren’t for the whole pack thing, he doesn’t exactly want her _dead_. And especially not at the hands of an _Argent._ “Oh thank god,” Kate says. “Just shoot her already before I have to shoot myself.”

“You said we were just going to catch them.”

“We did that. Now we’re going to kill them.” A gunshot to the stomach before he can even work out the arrow in his leg. Damn trigger-happy hunters. He’d yell at Scout to run if he thought it would do anything. “See? Not that hard—Oh no, I know that look. That’s the You’re Going to Have to Do It Yourself look.”

Derek can’t see what’s happening because well, he has the minor complication of having a bullet in his stomach, which hurts, but he hears Allison’s “Kate, Kate, what’re you doing?” clear enough along with the thud of a body hitting the ground.

He hasn’t felt this useless in years.

“I love those brown eyes—”

Before Chris Argent comes into eyeshot, Derek smells him, and he sure isn’t expecting the sudden, “Kate, I know what you did,” because he’s an Argent too, precious code or not. “Put the gun down.”

“I did what I was told to do.” Her heartbeat doesn’t even speed up. He really had sex with this woman?

Chris’ heartbeat doesn’t speed up either when he says, “No one asked you to murder innocent people. There were children in that house. Ones who were human. Look at what you’re doing now, you’re holding a gun at a sixteen-year-old girl! No proof she spilled human blood.” Yeah, no shit, her eyes are still gold. Maybe if they did their research they’d know that was proof enough. “We go by the code. Put the gun down.”

A gun fires, and Derek doesn’t smell Scout’s blood, but he rolls over anyway to check. Poor girl looks terrified, and he can’t blame her. She should be at a dull school dance right now, not held at gunpoint by a psychotic Kate Argent.

Then the door to his house creaks open.

Back to snapping arrows it is.

 

 

Scout’s stretched out on the bed, blankets pooled down at her waist, arms tucked under her pillow (or his pillow, technically), and her eyes closed. For the first time that he’s seen in a while, she’s actually got a bit of a smile on her face. “So I’m guessing everything’s good with Allison?” Stiles says, flopping down next to her and kneeing her hip when he kicks the covers over himself.

With her eyes still closed, she hums affirmative. “Actually spent the past couple of hours on the roof with her,” she says, smile growing. “She’s totally chill with the whole werewolf thing.”

So the biggest problem now is Lydia, then. But the doctors say she’s past the critical stage and her bite’s not healing, so they might not know what she is, but at least she’s not a werewolf either. “Awesome,” he says, and means it, because how cool is it to have hunters on their side? Or sort of like that anyway. “Alpha’s dead, day saved, and you’ve got your girl. Happily ever after.”

“If I weren’t so comfortable, I’d totally hit you for saying that.”

“No you wouldn’t. You love me too much.”

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever helps you sleep at night, Stilinski.”

He smiles and shuts his eyes too. “It’s a weekend tomorrow,” he tells her, “which means sleeping in and pancakes.”

Now that he’s lying in a similar position as her, she finds his hand with hers under the pillows and squeezes his fingers. “And a lot of coffee,” she adds. “’Night, Stiles.”

“’Night, Scott.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All Scout wants is a year with her best friend and secret girlfriend, but Jackson is a homicidal lizard, Derek's sort of evil at times and overprotective at others, and Lydia's going crazy.
> 
> Oh, and Allison's grandpa is a dick. No one is surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually really enjoyed this. Despite season two starting to take the downward turn into being depressing, this is pretty happy. Don't be deceived; I promise angst next time.

Getting pulled out of a car by Chris fucking Argent halfway through making out with Allison and ripping open the back of the shirt Lydia bought her is not the way Scout was planning on spending a Saturday afternoon.

Allison runs out the moment she’s thrown against the hood. “No, no, Dad, she saved our lives, saved your life,” she says, scrambling up next to him, and god, her heart is hammering so loud it’s hard to concentrate on anything else. “No, you can’t do this—let her go, please let her go, a-and I’ll do whatever you want, okay? I swear, I won’t see her again, I promise, ever again, Dad, please, Dad, _please_ —”

Even when her father removes the gun, Scout doesn’t move. Seems safer for all of them that way. “Never again,” he tells his daughter, ignoring her, and she knows from experience that this is heartbreak all over again.

He lets Allison drive her home at least, where her girlfriend says she doesn’t care what anyone tells them and plans out an entire secret relationship in under ten minutes. Obviously someone came prepared, and Scout is relieved enough not to argue.

For just this once, she's okay with being selfish.

 

 

Two days later and Scout’s crouching outside the window in her bra and underwear. If her mom weren’t in the room, Allison might even laugh at that.

 

 

“No, I’m pretty sure it’s clique,” she tells Mr. Argent, trying to ignore all the blood rushing to her head and wishing she had Stiles to cut her down right away because this was one truly dumbass mistake. “I mean, I am a teenage girl. Last I checked, the word is clique.”

Behind Mr. Argent stands an entire hunting party, but Scout as a feeling they won’t do anything without his say. “I hope you’re right,” he says, “because she’s friends with Allison. One special case such as yourself is one I can handle. Not two.” He pauses, and sighs. “Scout, do you know—what’s so funny?”

Oh, great, she knows what that snicker means. Because one of the men behind him seriously just snickered. “This chick’s name is really Scout?” the man says, and motion to her with his rifle. He looks young. “And your daughter thought she’d have good luck?”

“I was named after the little girl in _To Kill a Mockingbird_ ,” she snaps. “Guess you never read it.” She doesn’t mention it’s one of the few books she’s read, too. Or that she hated it more than the _Great Gatsby._ “Also, I’m sixteen. Do you really need to call me ‘chick?’”

Mr. Argent doesn’t laugh, but his mouth twitches like he at least wants to smile. After a moment, he says, “Scout, do you know what a hemicorporectomy is?” and goes back to being Mr. Serious Grumpy Face.

More long words she doesn’t know. Hopefully no one’s seen Stiles or Allison yet. “I have a feeling I don’t want to.”

“Medical term for cutting a person at the waist. Cutting them in half.” He reaches up and draws a line across her stomach with the side of his hand. Before the bite, she was ticklish there. “Takes a tremendous amount of strength, cutting through muscle and bone like that. That’s all for the demonstration unless it becomes necessary.”

At least he said unless necessary instead of until, she figures.

After he and his hunting party are gone, Allison and Stiles are back, and she uses her claws to cut herself down. “Are you okay?” her girlfriend asks.

“Yeah,” she answers, stabilizing herself. “Just, you know. Another life threatening conversation with your dad.” With an added smile, she takes a step backwards towards the Hale house and says, “You coming?”

Allison giggles and Stiles shakes his head in disbelief, but they follow right behind her.

 

 

Watching Scout strip out of her skirt and button down so she’s just in her undershirt and leggings in front of a whole group of strangers is unexpected, but appreciated. Lydia can’t remember the past few days, but obviously she’s naked, and she feels better the moment she’s covered up.

“Even after running around in the woods with no clothes for two days, you still look beautiful,” the other girl says, fixing a few buttons, and Lydia isn’t used to people being nice just for the sake of being nice. Her whole body hurts, and the clothes are all a size too small, but close enough not to tear. “Stiles’ dad is bringing you home now.” Then Scout  twists around and calls, “We’re ready!”

Realistically, they didn’t need to hide behind the crime scene ambulance now that everyone here saw her full frontal (including Stiles Stilinski, and Lydia doesn’t know how she feels about that), but she’s too exhausted to think on it further. She lets Scout lead her around, back towards the group who all avert their eyes (except for Stiles who comes over to try to help) like looking is so terrible. They’ve all probably seen bodies naked; what’s the problem with hers? Is it because she’s underage, or alive?

Sheriff Stilinski leads her to the car. “I called your parents,” he says gently, putting her in front seat while the ever present duo of Scout and Stiles pile into the back uninvited. “I’m bringing you home. We’ll save the questions for tomorrow.”

In her tired state, she can’t remember if this is standard protocol for minors, or if it’s special privileges because the sheriff thinks she’s friends with his son, which is quite possibly true by this point. Lydia doesn’t really understand the concept friends outside of the clinical psychology, though the description fits for how she feels about Allison and somehow Scout, and maybe even Stiles, too.

But she does understand that somehow, he helped save her, and she can’t hate him for that.

 

 

“If you feel the need to express how good things are with Allison,” Stiles says a day later, pushing his books into his locker, “you can at least give me details.”

Because of the whole werewolf thing, Scout’s “playful” little shoves now kind of hurt and he doesn’t think she realizes it. “I’m not giving you details on my sex life,” she says. “If me or Allison were a guy you wouldn’t care.”

If either she or her girlfriend was a boy instead a girl, it wouldn’t be hot. But Allison’s practically a fucking model and Scout’s just sort of in general attractive on a very high level, so yeah. He wouldn’t mind details on their apparently awesome lesbian sex. “Nah, I’d be cathartically living through you instead,” he tells her, and she grins. “But anyways, moving on. I’ve got something better than handcuffs to tie you up with.”

Thank god no one’s around to hear this. “What is it?”

“Uh, chains,” he answers, “like the kind used for dogs. You’re a wolf puppy, thought it was appropriate—dude, what’s wrong with your eyes?” Snapping back he’s prepared for, but not for her eyes to do the thing. “I thought you didn’t want to maim and kill me this time.”

After a quick glance around at the people pouring out of classrooms from various early morning meetings (including lacrosse ones they were supposed to be at), she grabs his arm and says, “There’s another. In here.”

“Another what?” He’s at least ninety percent sure he already knows the answer to this one.

“Another werewolf.” And one point to Stiles Stilinski.

They look around, but there are too many people and too many smells for Scout to get a pin on who it is. Stiles gives her hand a quick squeeze of reassurance before they separate for first period.

 

 

The moment she can get them without Gerard, Allison has a talk with her parents because she might not like how they treat Scout, but at least she’s _actually_ a werewolf.  “Leave Lydia alone,” she tells them. “She’s not a werewolf. Her bite would’ve healed if she was, same as it did with Scout.”

Both of her parents look up at her from their places on the couch, evidently surprised. “How do you know what happened to Scout?” asks Mom, suspicious because she’s  _always_ suspicious. Maybe Allison just isn’t being miserable enough. “Did you see her again?”

 _Only like a thousand times._ “I made her tell everything before _somebody_ put a gun to her face and scared her half to death,” she lies. “I still think Derek Hale sounds like di—jerk, but for some reason Scout trusted him, and he told her that if the bite takes, it heals itself along with any other injuries. So for Lydia it didn’t take. For some reason. Derek doesn't know why.”

Even though Gerard acts like such an expert, Dad admitted after the thing with Peter Hale and Kate that they didn’t know as much as they should. She doesn’t understand why they push Scout away instead of, like, working together to hunt what actually wants to hurt people. That way the two of them wouldn’t have to hide being together. “What else did Derek tell her?” says Dad. 

Allison sighs and flops into one of the armchairs. “That werewolves can learn to control themselves even on the full moon,” she answers because maybe eventually she’ll get her parents to trust her girlfriend so they can go back to being actual girlfriends. “Only Alphas can influence Betas, which is why the worst Derek could do was be a total creep and break into her room in the middle of the night—”

“Wait,” cuts in Mom and Allison shuts up. “Derek Hale—older, bigger, _male_ , Derek Hale—broke into a teenage girl’s room in the middle of the night?”

“Yes. As far as introductions go, that’s really not a good one.”

Her parents exchange a Look. “We know how you feel about Scout, and we see now that she’s young enough not to understand what’s happening to her,” Dad says, “but we didn’t start hunting without reason.”

Basically, he’s saying that Derek Hale isn’t one of the Good Guys. Maybe it’s a jealousy thing, or maybe she really just doesn’t like how he treats her girlfriend, but Allison doesn’t like him in general. Killing him, though? That’s extreme. “We’re getting sidetracked,” she says quickly. “Just, Scout’s bite healed and she became a werewolf, but Lydia’s didn’t, which means she’s not. So can I _please_ go back to being allowed to have her over? Since I had to switch Scout, we’re lab partners.”

Oh, again with the Look. _Parents._ They think they know everything just because they’re older. Finally, Dad says, “Fine. But be careful. Just because she isn’t a werewolf doesn’t mean she went completely unaffected.”

“ _Thank_ you,” she answers, exasperated, and stands. “Well, I’m going over her house to make sure she’s okay. School was really rough for her today. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

As she leaves, both her parents shout “Be careful!” at the same time and she really hadn’t known it was possible for them to be any more overprotective than they already were to begin with.

 

 

Scout understands abuse. She understands solutions. Sometimes it’s divorcing the abusive one because it’s not both parents who do it; sometimes it’s foster care. From what she’s heard, foster care isn’t fun. She’s also pretty sure there’re probably other solutions involved too, but those are the two she knows.

Neither of them involve werewolves.

Now she and Stiles sit side to side, slumped against his bed on the floor, and she’s really not enjoying this. “I’m not going to say the guy didn’t get what was coming to him,” her friend says after a minute of silence, “but Derek really messed up this time.”

There’s no _at least Isaac was given a choice._ It doesn’t work that way. “We’re stronger as a pack,” she says, even though he already knows this. “Just Isaac’s not really a pack. I don’t know how many people it takes to count as one.”

“Do you think he’ll try to do what his uncle did?” Stiles asks. “Get you in his pack. I mean, you’re not exactly new. You’ve got control and everything. You’re The Cute Little Werewolf that Could.”

“Shut up,” she answers, but doesn’t really mean it. “And I don’t know. Probably. Doubt he’ll try to get me to kill all my friends. I’m pretty sure he likes you.”

“I feel so flattered.” She rolls her eyes. “Hey, I’m being serious. If Mr. Red Eyes doesn’t want you killing me, then he’s my new second favorite person. Third favorite person. Fourth favorite person.”

Talk about a long totem pole of favorite people. “I found out what I am now that ‘my’ Alpha is dead,” she says, dropping her head to his shoulder because even though it’s been twenty-four hours, the thing with Lydia pushed it to the backburner. “Derek’s been calling me a Beta and hasn’t stopped, but I guess that’s because he wants me in his pack. Turns out I’m actually an Omega.”

“That sounds like an insult.”

“I think it is.” She explains what it means, that an Omega is a werewolf without a pack, and about the one Allison’s family killed in the woods. “Mr. Argent doesn’t seem to like Grandpa all that much.”

Putting his head on top of hers, Stiles says, “Can you blame him? The guy is like a bundle of evil concentrated into the body of some old guy who looks like he should be hanging up Christmas stockings three weeks too early. Allison should steer clear. Actually, you should steer clear.”

“Good thing I’m not allowed over for dinner then.” Of all the difficulties that came out of technically not being able to date her girlfriend, that’s the only one she doesn’t mind. “I’m going over Lydia’s tomorrow to check on her. I think she likes me enough for that now. Want to come?”

“Are you seriously asking me this?” he says, sounding incredulous, and she almost laughs. “Hell yeah, I’ll go over the house of one lovely Lydia Martin.”

With plans now set, they focus the rest of their afternoon to pizza and video games.

 

 

Being a werewolf means that Scout doesn’t feel the eight inch height difference between her and Erica, but with everyone around her, she needs to pretend that she does. So she forces herself to fall back against the floor.

Hard.

Allison gets Erica off and onto her side and Stiles pulls Scout from the floor while Coach calls for an ambulance. “Good work, McCall,” he says when Erica’s deemed safe, thumping his hand on her back in a gesture of manly pride. “You’re an idiot, but at least you’re a good one.”

One of the EMTs knows her mom and someone else apparently spilled what happened because the guy asks, “Did you hurt anything when you hit the floor? Do you feel like you have a concussion?”

“No, I’m fine,” she says, already inching over towards Stiles who’s inching over to her. “Look, I really have to get to class.”

After a few more fussy questions, everyone lets her go and the ambulance drives off with Erica. For the rest of the day Scout finds herself getting congratulated by being called an idiot for putting herself in harm’s way in different forms, and this still doesn’t get Boyd to give them the keys for free.

 

 

When she sees Erica—new, redesigned, sexy as all hell Erica—slip into the car next to Derek, Scout tries to tell herself that she doesn’t feel like she’s being replaced.

It doesn’t work.

 

 

So Scout might suck at skating, but Allison really doesn’t mind because this means she gets to take her girlfriend by the hands and drag her around the rink. Also, Lydia and Stiles are adorable and she’s _so_ glad the bite didn’t take.

“We should play matchmaker with the two of them,” she says, watching Lydia take Stiles by the hand. “We can call it Operation: See What’s Right in Front of You.”

Scout smiles, but her eyes are still focused on her feet. “Or we could combine their names,” she says. “It’s been my secret mission since I saw her give him her number. Operation Stydia.”

Of everyone Allison’s met in Beacon Hill, Stiles is probably the second best person she knows. First being, of course, Scout, and Lydia might be her best friend, but even she admits the girl isn’t the sweetest even though she has the capacity to be. They’d make a good pair. And Stiles is way better than Jackson. She still can’t get over how wrong she was about him. So much for being a good judge of character.

But both Stiles and Lydia are her friends. And double dates wouldn’t feel like double dates. “I like it,” she says, and Scout can’t see it when she smiles, too. “Come on, let’s go over to the picture booth. We need to fulfill that stereotype.”

All it takes is for Scout to look up _once_ and she falls flat on her ass. “Yeah,” she says, but she’s laughing. “Booth it is.”

Allison really loves her girlfriend, and really loves her friends. Her family isn’t taking that away from her.

 

 

Erica doesn’t hate McCall. Really, she doesn’t. She just doesn’t like that they look nothing alike and Derek’s already called her Scout _twice_. And the girl isn’t even in their pack.

Not that she's jealous or anything. But if Scout would officially be in the pack, then maybe Derek will start looking at her as her, so she tries to make sweet little Allison Argent, heir of the family that specifically spends nights trying to kill them, jealous instead, but one overheard lunch conversation shows hard she failed considering the opening words are literally, “I’m not jealous.”

Scout doesn’t turn around exactly, but she sort of twitches her head in Allison’s direction when she says, “You’re not?”

“I don’t even think she’s into girls. She’s with Derek now, isn’t she? Like Isaac?” Erica’s hand tightens its grip around the water bottle she brought for lunch. “You can’t get caught in the middle of this.” Well isn’t that real hypocritical, Miss Hidden Relationship Status. “Don’t you feel what’s happening here? My grandfather coming, Derek turning Erica and Isaac—it’s like battle lines are being drawn.”

“I know.”

“There’s always crossfire.” Yeah, and if there’s any crossfire, it’s going to be her. She’s just a human.

Then Scout goes off on some great spiel about how she can’t settle with the sidelines because people will get hurt like she’s a female Peter fucking Parker or something. Erica gets up to go eat in the hallway before the teenage love story can make her sick.

 

 

Even if they are his pack, there are few things Derek finds funnier than watching little five foot even Scout beat the shit out of two people, especially one over six feet tall. But, well, she’s Scout. The first werewolf he spoke to for years. She’ll always be that one special exception.

Still. That doesn’t stop him from throwing her around, too, and she might fight harder than any werewolf without pack he’s ever seen, but she still falls easy.

He leaves without saying anything, and Boyd follows.

 

 

Melissa isn’t surprised when she knocks on Scout’s door and it’s Stiles who opens instead. “Are you okay?” she asks because it was him she came up for to begin with. “I heard what happened at the hospital.”

“I’m fine, Melissa,” he answers, and slings his arm around her daughter’s shoulders as she comes up to him. “Scout here came and picked me up.”

Normally she doesn’t like Scout taking the car without her permission, but this is what she considers a special circumstance. “We’re going to hang out up here for a while,” her daughter says, and that actually translates to _Stiles is staying over, but of course you don’t know that._ Neither of them seem to realize both parents have them all figured out.

“I’ll try not to wake you up when I leave,” Stiles adds and it’s not like he will because he isn’t leaving. Maybe other mothers would argue, but she’s given up when it comes to these two. This kid is practically her son and if he wants to stay over after a near death experience, then he can stay over after a near death experience.

After she tells him to come get her if needs anything, the three say goodnight at the door. Scout’s been vague about why she and Allison broke up, and Melissa wonders if it had something to do with Stiles and her daughter repeatedly sharing a bed.

 

 

Though she doesn’t really want to be alone with Mr. Argent, Scout is beyond relieved when he asks her to help him grab dessert. She isn’t expecting a near nervous breakdown to hit her the moment she’s through the doorway. “What’s a good excuse to get me out of here without him insisting I stay?” she says before he can do anything. “That’s how I ended up here in the first place.”

Mr. Argent grabs the cake. “My father can be very persuasive,” he says, voice tense. “And I think you might have to suffer through dessert before you can do that.”

Even if she was still openly going out with Allison, she’d have avoided family dinners like the plague after the last one. She hadn’t realized it could get any worse. “I’m so not ready to be cut in half if he finds out,” she says out loud without really meaning to, pushing her fingers through her hair. “God, what would happen to _you?_ ”

“Nothing good,” he answers, and turns towards the kitchen, “but I’d have many chances to redeem myself, and that wouldn’t be good for you, Scout.”

All she wants is a normal life where she can have dinner with her girlfriend’s family and not be given death threats. Apparently that isn’t happening any time soon.

 

 

“Dude, that’s blood!”

 “Yes, I’m aware. Now give me a shirt.”

Stiles hands over a shirt without question and Scout quickly switches what she’s wearing. Where Derek clawed her is completely healed. “What happened?” he asks because he knows this is more than your run of the mill fight.

The bloody shirt lands in his trash can and she looks like a wreck and a half. Much worse than when she got back from Allison’s, and she wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows then, either. “Fucking Gerard cornered me outside the parking lot, stabbed me in the stomach, and threatened to kill my mom if I don’t get info on Derek,” she answers, eyes flipping back and forth between glowing yellow and brown so fast that it’s trippy. “We’re figuring something out, Stiles, because I’m not risking it.”

Okay, threatening normal innocent people is one thing, but threatening Melissa? Now that’s going too far. “We’re two healthy teenagers who play sports and take our vitamins,” he says as he takes her by the upper arms and steers her towards his bed, sitting her down. “We can totally outsmart a cranky old guy with a stick up his ass.”

“A cranky old guy with a stick up his ass _who cut a werewolf in half with a broadsword._ ” She rubs her eyes, which have gone from flickering to tearing up and as her best friend, he’s not sure which one is worse. But really, Melissa? Did Gerard really have to sink that low? That’s bordering James Bond villain evil right there, threatening innocent mothers like that. “How the hell did Allison turn out the way she did? Because she’s from a family of complete nutcases.”

And if it weren’t for Scout, then Allison would probably be turning out like the rest of her family right now. Last Stiles checked, it’s called brainwashing. Tell a person a thing is evil often enough and they start to believe it as a fact, even without all the evidence to back it up. “Even a family of black sheep has to have that one white sheep, right?” he says. “She’s like a genetic mutation of goodness. And yet someone she managed to become friends with Lydia.”

Scout wipes away her oncoming tears and says, “Stiles, when we leave high school the four of us are going to a city so even if we go to different colleges we can share an apartment. Then we’ll all be safe because we’re together and Mom will be safe because I won’t be anywhere near her.”

“Hey, back in sixth grade you said we were buying a house together,” he says, just so he can get her to smile. “No take-backs.”

"Apartment sounds cheaper.”

“And you’re a werewolf. Who cares about realistic goals in life?”

Now she laughs, which is awesome, and even when she leaves to go meet up with Allison, he spends the rest of the night devising creative ways to kill Gerard and get away with it.

 

 

She’s Lydia Martin, most popular girl in school—brilliant, beautiful, and conveniently also defies all teenage clichés and actually has parents that love her. So no, she absolutely is _not_ the type of person to trade psychoses in school guidance offices or talk to therapists because she is fine.

And she definitely doesn’t need Scout and Stiles to act all concerned. Or, well, right now just Scout, so Lydia thinks she has full rights to flip it back around. “What’s with Erica?” she asks, slapping the other girl’s hand out of the way when she tries to help. “Allison is getting protective, not jealous, which means it can’t be anything good.”

“She being a bitch, that’s all,” Scout answers. “I stop her from smashing her head into the floor and she repairs me by trying to make my girlfriend jealous. Does she even like girls?”

As the most popular girl in school, Lydia is required to know everything. “She categorizes herself as solidly heterosexual,” she says. “Are you planning on doing—?”

"Do you want to go shopping after school?” She pauses what she’s doing and turns to stare because this is Scout and Scout only goes shopping when she’s forced. “Look, your day’s obviously been complete crap—don’t deny it, I have eyes—and mine’s sucking pretty hard too and there’s no lacrosse to burn away the energy, so what do you say? Shopping trip?”

This normally is not how she’d want to spend her afternoon but the only person she wants worrying over her less than Scout McCall is her own mother, who may or may not hear about what happened in econ by the end of today, and anyway, last time she enjoyed herself at least a little, she supposes. “I’m driving,” she says, and Harris calls for a station switch.

 

 

Lydia cancels because her mom makes her go to counseling after school last minute.

Honestly, Scout hadn’t known this day could get any harder.

 

 

Now that Jackson’s locked up in the back of a truck, they’re stuck on watch duty. For the most part, Scout feels awful for doing this to him, but another part of her is acting as a reminder that this is Jackson so it’s actually pretty cathartic.

That, and she gets to spend more time with Allison. “Are we seriously part of your _pack?_ ” her girlfriend says, pressing kisses to her neck. “I can’t tell if I’m supposed to be flattered or creeped out.”

“Well, you’re the one who pins me to the bed,” Scout answers, and tilts her neck to the side. “Doesn’t show such outstanding leadership qualities, does it?”

When Allison laughs, the sound vibrates against her throat. Scout wonders what she would do if she knew what Gerard said, or where he decided to stick his knife. “Even great leaders have to give it up sometimes.”

“Don’t call me a leader. I can’t even handle the responsibility necessary to do my homework.”

Allison’s hands get under her shirt. “No, you’re a little Alpha with gold eyes still apparently,” she says, “and you have no _idea_ how much fun it is getting you under—what is it?”

Long before her friend’s Jeep can show up, Scout can hear it, and she pushes Allison’s arms away from her. “Stiles has a tendency to joke about details,” she answers, “but I don’t actually want him walking in on anything.”

“Oh, no, I get it.”

A minute later Stiles shows up with sandwiches for Jackson and a text message on a stolen phone. He adds _Love you_ as an afterthought at Allison’s suggestion.

 

 

A restraining order. Of course, it’s Jackson. Why else did Stiles expect by helping him? Gratitude? Nope. Just more trouble for him and his friends. But watching Scout fight with her mom is particularly painfully because Melissa doesn’t get that this is all for her.

“It’s not just this,” Melissa says, not even bothering to pull her out of the hallway, which means that she’s really pissed and Stiles is preparing for trouble of his own, but his Dad’s never around, so getting way with stuff is easier, even if disappointing him does hurt like a bitch. “It’s everything else on top of it—the completely bizarre behavior, the late nights coming home, having to beg Mr. Harris to make for the chemistry test you missed—” He swings around the corner, Dad finished dishing out his own punishment and oh no, she’s doing the Parental Finger Counting. “I have to ground you, I’m grounding you, you’re grounded.”

“But what about work?”

“Fine. Other than work.” Melissa pauses. “And no TV.”

“My TV is broken.”

Stiles really just wants to wave his hands in the air to let her know to shut up before she says anything make it worse because he knows better than to verbally get in the middle of a McCall argument. “Then no computer.”

But no, no, Scout isn’t telepathic. “I need the computer for school.”

“Then no, uh—” Melissa turns around, her eyes land on him and no, no, no, no— “No Stiles.”

Probably against his better judgment, he rushes forward too and says, “What, no Stiles?”

“No Stiles!” The finger. Nope, backing up. “You’re locking your window at night until I say otherwise, Scout. And no car privileges, give me your keys.”

Without argument, Scout hands them over and okay, Stiles has been making jokes about her being a puppy long before the whole werewolf thing, but right now she really does resemble a downtrodden one. He really just wants to grab her by the back of the jacket she’s wearing and drag her out of here because he should’ve thought this through. Of course someone like Jackson wouldn’t add _love you_ at the end of his text message. He isn’t like the rest of them.

Suddenly Melissa is holding Scout’s hands. “What is going on with you?” she asks. “Is this about Allison?”

Stiles gives up with attempted telepathy and shakes his head. Bad excuse. “Do you really want to know?” she answers and nope, she better not be telling the truth here in the middle of the police station. With his dad and Jackson’s parents right inside the next room.

So he keeps shaking his head.

“Yeah,” Melissa says. And then she pauses and continues, “Is this about your father?”

Scout says it is, and that’s just about the only excuse that’s worse.

 

 

Even though it’s something she promised herself she’d never do, Melissa searches her daughter’s room. She finds a picture of Scout and Allison that either Stiles or Lydia must have taken, and they’re both sitting on the same swing, obviously happy. Scout’s laughing, eyes closed and face partially turned away from the camera, and she’s wearing a hat that isn’t hers. The back reads _Because I love you_ in Allison’s loopy handwriting.

The edge is torn like Scout started to rip it but couldn’t manage to even as she tried. And that’s just heartbreaking.

 

 

“What are you going to do?”

Allison doesn’t like this, the whole “date other people” thing, especially since it’s essentially more bad news piled onto Jackson and now her father knowing, but Scout seems seriously freaked and that’s never a good thing. “I don’t know,” she answers, adjusting her weight from one foot to the other. “I guess if your parents are showing up tonight I can wait until I’m directly in their line of sight and get Stiles to kiss me.”

Oh. Stiles. Right. “Everyone already thinks you’re dating,” Allison says, running her fingers through her hair, and reminds herself that this little tidbit of information is something that absolutely does not bother her. “That should work. Do I _have_ to kiss Matt?”

“Uh, honestly I’d prefer it if you didn’t,” Scout says, “but if it’s necessary—well, I want to stay with you. And I’m willing to do whatever it takes, so. Yeah. Just don’t kiss him like that please. You told me you never really told your parents that you aren't into guys, either. So...”

With a small smile, Allison leans over to kiss her again. “I love you,” she says, knowing that she has to leave if they both want to make it to class in time since Scout will have to wait. “You better go tell Stiles about your brilliant plan.”

“This is going to be so weird. I love you, too.”

Yeah, it is, considering half the school is going to be there and for them, this will act as verification. She’s absolutely giving Lydia a head’s up too. “Just don’t make it too believable,” she adds, hand on the doorknob. “Operation Stydia is still in business.”

Scout’s laughter follows her as she leaves, and the sound is beautiful.

 

 

The Argents show up right before Scout disappears inside, and they think they’re being all discreet about their arrival. Stiles drops the backpack, presses her against the wall of the club, and kisses her in the most believable way he can.

 

 

Allison gets a text on her phone from Stiles that reads, _Are you with scout?_

 _No,_ she answers. _Thought she was with you._ _What’s wrong?_

When she doesn’t get an answer after two minutes, she tells Matt she has to go and runs. This is so not happening. Not now, not today, not when the last person her girlfriend kissed was someone other than her.

 

 

Scout is no stranger to constricted breathing, even though it's been nearly a year. It feels like the time she broke her ribs, and it was that mixed with asthma, and the wolf's bane seeps with her lungs. Mrs. Argent even has the audacity to stay and watch, not even looking affected. What happened to the family's code? Scout wonders even as she starts to lose consciousness. If her husband wanted to kill her for making out with Allison at school, he'd probably shoot her in the head and keep it quick and painless. This is is so slow she's pretty sure it counts as torture. 

As she passes out, she sees Derek enter. There are claws and red eyes and she misses the bite, but her friend leans down and rolls her up in his arms.

"You'll be fine," he tells her as he runs from the room. "Keep breathing and everything will be fine."

Before she can answer, getting air into her lungs becomes too difficult, and everything goes black. 

 

 

By the time she’s dropped Matt off at home and found out he’s a total stalker, Allison still doesn’t have an answer from anyone, and that’s not without trying. And now she has to deal with this.

Matt’s leaning through her half open window, acting like it’s no big deal, when he says, “There’s some good pictures in there, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, the lacrosse ones are amazing,” she answers, feeling nauseous. “I was really impressed, you’re really talented.”

The way he’s standing has to be hurting his arm, but he doesn’t seem to feel it, which only freaks her out more, but no. She’s Allison Argent, she’s got a knife strapped to the side of the seat and she’s not afraid to use it if things get ugly. Mom and Dad will understand. “There’s a good candid in there of you, too,” he says, and that’s already starting to point in the wrong direction. “You can see some of the others if you like. This tiny little screen doesn’t really do it justice, but, uh, I can show you some on my computer.”

God no, this is so not happening. “Oh, I would totally like that, but maybe another night.”

“Just for a few minutes.”

She smiles and shakes her head. Her phone still isn’t ringing. “It’s getting kind of late.”

“It’s the weekend.”

“I know, but—”

“And spring break,” he continues. “It’s not like you have anything going on tomorrow, do you?”

Finally her phone buzzes, but she can see the caller ID and it’s Lydia, not Stiles or Scout. “Look, Matt,” she says, “this whole thing was a big misunderstanding. I thought you knew—I’m not into boys.”

“Wait, what—”

“I should really get going.”

She rolls the window shut the moment his hand his out of the way and hits the gas. Why isn’t anyone answering, and where the hell is Scout?

 

 

For hours Derek sits by Scout's side as she lies on the cold hard vet table, and eventually his pack and Stiles show up too. She’s going after Jackson as part of them, but she’s not, well, officially one of them—realistically he shouldn’t care this much. Just like he shouldn’t have bitten an Argent, but that was instincts taking over, and it was her own damn fault for trying to kill one of his own.

They fight, sure, because the girl’s got this naïve belief that she can save everyone, which is just about the biggest hero complex he’s ever seen, but he’s not in to letting her die like that. And wolf’s bane vaporizer? Hunters use it as an interrogation technique because it's so painful and slow. Usually it's combined with an electric current.

Some time around midnight, she wakes up. Allison’s been calling her nonstop. “Whoa, whoa, you’re fine,” Stiles says when she starts to struggle, grabbing onto her shoulders. “Derek got you out.”

“Thanks,” she says, searching Derek out, but she’s still clinging to Stiles. “Why?”

“You were dying,” he answers. “I heard it. Deaton said you might still have trouble breathing. It's the leftover effects of you asthma.”

With a nod, she says, “Yeah, just a little. I can’t—what the fuck?”

Stiles shrugs. “Hunter girlfriend with hunter parents,” he says. “Told you this would happen.”

“Is she okay? What happened?”

“I had to fight off her mother,” Derek says, crossing his arms and leaning back against the wall. “Her shoulder grazed my teeth. Your girlfriend won’t be okay for too long.”

His pack are all half asleep against the opposite wall, but Isaac looks up and asks, “What do you mean?”

Scout’s got this look on her face like she already knows why. Somehow that makes it worse when he has to explain a hunter’s rules when it comes to the bite.

 

 

Once she leaves Derek, Scout finally calls Allison back from Stiles’ phone. “Sorry, I got hurt,” she says, and doesn’t want to elaborate, “but you know me, healing powers and all. I’m fine now.”

“ _Then why didn’t you call back? Either of you?_ ”

“We got a little tied up with Jackson clean up and Derek being Derek.” She’s avoiding telling Allison the truth as long as possible. Forever, if she can manage. Her girlfriend doesn’t deserve this. Hell, Mr. Argent doesn’t either. “We couldn’t really get access to a phone. How did it go with you?”

Allison tells her all about Matt. “ _Hopefully telling him I’m only into girls will get him to lay off my back._ ”

Fucking Matt. Scout knew she didn’t like him for a reason. “Yeah, either that or he’ll be one of those guys who thinks he’s the one who can change you or whatever.” Her head is still pounding from the leftover effects of the wolf’s bane. “Look, Allison, I want to catch some sleep. See you at Lydia’s party? Call me if you can’t make it.”

“ _Why wouldn’t I be able to make it? And yeah, go get some sleep. You sound like you need it._ ”

“Oh, thanks. Good to know I have such great support from my girlfriend.” Allison laughs. “I love you.”

“ _I love you too_.”

When Scout hangs up and passes the phone back to a baffled looking Stiles, he says, “So you aren’t going to tell her that her mom went all psycho killer on you and is now probably going to die?”

She shakes her head. “I wish I could give her the head’s up, but I can’t without saying how I know,” she answers, “and I can’t let Allison’s last memory of her be her trying to killing me. That’s just cruel.”

“As your best friend, I’m telling you this is a very bad idea.”

Of course it is, but most of her ideas are, she finds, and flops back on his bed. Later they have Lydia’s party and this is the first year they’ll ever go. “Go take a nap,” she tells him, sweeping his legs out from under him by the back of his knees so he lands next to her. “You didn’t have to stay awake all night watching out for me.”

As he shuts his eyes and settles in, Stiles says, “Yeah I did. What else are best friends good for?”

She doesn’t have an answer to this, and honestly, she doesn’t really need one.

 

 

Once she sees that Matt’s there, Allison decides to stick by Scout the whole night, even though her girlfriend is being frustratingly vague about what happened to her. When Dad phones, she leaves alone.

They don’t notice at first that Lydia is gone.

And Allison doesn’t realize that Scout doesn’t look surprised by the call at all.

 

 

Matt being the killer is something Stiles called ages ago, back when they first discovered when a Kanima is. But really, he’s not into getting proven right at gunpoint. That’s just not cool. Making him handcuff his own dad also isn’t cool, but this is such a mess of Not Cool right now that Stiles has decided to keep the list of things down to two.

Or, well, maybe three. Jackson the Man Killing Lizard is running around too and—oh, dead guards. He was on a first name basis with every single one of them. Great. “What,” Scout says, “you’re going to kill everyone in here?”

What was really the tip off with Matt was the creepy smile, and that’s what he’s doing and man, Stiles just wants to punch it right off his smug face when he answers, “No, that’s what Jackson’s for. I just think about killing them and he does it.”

Then he pushes them along and Stiles never really thought this would be a thing that would cross his mind before, but he actually feels _sorry_ for Jackson. If you’ve got to roped up to someone, there’s got to be a lot of people out there better than this bastard, and that’s who he got stuck with.

 

 

Because Mom won’t talk to her, Stiles is dealing with his own issues with his Dad, and Allison straight up told her to leave her alone while holding a crossbow to face and proceeded to ignore any attempted meeting time, Scout goes to Lydia with Ben & Jerry’s Rocky Road. It only feels appropriate.

“I’m sorry that this is so out of nowhere,” she says ten minute later, up in her friend’s room with their frozen yogurt and _Mean Girls_ playing on the TV. “It’s just—I think I probably shouldn’t be home for a couple of hours.”

She feels bad because when Lydia needed someone to talk to, she was too busy running around trying to not kill Jackson to be any help. The best she could do was give her a party she was brainwashed into, according to Derek. “What was the fight about?” her friend asks, crossing her legs and going for another spoonful of frozen yogurt. “I assumed after Matt she wouldn’t leave you out of her sight.”

Actually she won’t look at me at all, she wants to say. “It was the usual fight. Grades and stuff,” she answers. “Matt just brought up the stress level to a boiling point. How are you doing?”

Lydia freezes. “What do you  mean, how am I doing?”

“Nevermind,” Scout says quickly because she wants to stick around, wants to be here. It’s here or it’s Derek’s right now and she likes Lydia a lot more at the moment. “Just—”

“Better.”

 “What?”

“I said better.”

Scout has another spoonful and figures there’s that, at least.

 

 

Of all the people in this town for him to trust, Isaac wasn’t expecting Scout, Derek's apparent favorite person if he freaked out enough to run straight into a cloud on wolf's bane for her. But he does, so he goes to where she works to ask for advice.

After she realizes what he wants, she tells him, “I’m not going anywhere. Everything’s falling apart right now, but I guess in the end I’ve still got too many people here counting on me.”

He thought she’d say something like this. Even though he hasn’t talked to her much in person, Derek ranted about her more than once. And also mentioned her like she was more of a friend than an enemy more than once, too. By this point he feels safe in assuming she’s not exactly the villain. She can’t be, really, if she cries when she takes away some random dog’s pain. People usually love girls like her. No wonder Stilinski and Argent both look at her like she's their whole world. It's something he's never had before, and probably never will. Stuff like that doesn't happen to people like him, and that's a fact he came to live the first time Dad locked him in the freezer.

“Well, lucky for me, then,” he says, pushing away from the metal table, “because I don’t have anybody.”

 

 

Though it takes some time, Melissa comes to…accept that what’s wrong with her daughter isn’t some fever dream. And that it works as a pretty good explanation for why she’s been acting so weird for the past few months. Saving her friends (and Beacon Hill) sounds like a valid reason for slacking off, even though if Stiles can multitask, Scout should be able to, too.

Also, now that she knows it doesn’t take much to figure out something’s happening when Scout suddenly tenses up and looks like she’s about to cry. Lydia’s her friend, so it can’t be her suddenly coming over that does it. Whatever’s going on is something only she can tell, so Melissa does what she can and takes her daughter's hand. The look of shock on her face is more heartbreaking than that partially torn photograph hidden away in her bedroom.

Running circles across Scout’s palm with her thumb, she says quietly, “How about you go sit with the second string players? You know your coach doesn’t mind.”

Her daughter nods, still looking a little shaken, and stands. “I’ll meet you after the game,” she answers, and maneuvers her way down, leaving Lydia noticeably disappointed.

A moment after Scout’s seated on the bench (Melissa might love Stiles like a son, but she’s too preoccupied with her daughter’s safety pay attention to the game), another boy comes over that she doesn’t recognize wearing a lacrosse uniform. When they see each other, Scout stands up and gives him such a big hug it looks like it hurts. Suddenly she understands that tonight just got a lot more complicated.

 

 

So Lydia knows she’s genuinely grown to like Scout McCall.

She hadn’t realized until now how much she genuinely like Stiles Stilinski too.

 

 

Jackson’s dead, Coach just gave her a heartwarming speech about grades and a hug, and now she’s starting down Peter fucking Hale in the boy’s locker room with her best friend missing and her girlfriend still trying to kill her friends. “What the hell is this?” she asks, because she’s so close to snapping point it’s not a joke anymore.

But of course Derek knows. “You know I thought the same thing when I heard you talking to Gerard at the sheriff’s station,” he answers, bowing his head slightly.

No, no, this is _not_ happening because her life is slipping through her fingers and Derek of all people was the only constant she thought he had because despite his inconsistency, he at least seemed to want to protect her. Right now, she can’t do this alone so she _needs_ that. She doesn't care how weak that makes her sound; she has a feeling it's an Alpha/Beta kind of thing. “Okay, that’s different,” she tells him. “He threatened to kill my mom. He’s already got Jackson to wrap his tail around her neck. Also, I had to get close to him. What was I supposed to do?”

“I’m with her on this one,” Peter says. “Have you seen her mom? She’s gorgeous.”

Then, both she and Derek at the same time: “Shut up!”

Isaac asks, “Who is he?”

“He’s Peter Hale,” she says, focusing on him and trying not to imagine his body burning. “Derek’s uncle. A little while ago we set him on fire and then Derek slashed his throat.”

Peter raises his hand. “Hi.”

As this is very important, she says, “Why is he alive?”

"Short version is he knows how to stop Jackson,” Derek answers. “Maybe how to save him.”

“Well, that’s very helpful,” Isaac says, “except Jackson’s dead.”

Yeah, stabbed to death by his own claws. Another bit of proof that Scout is completely useless. “It just happened,” she adds. “On the field.”

After a moment of no one doing anything, Isaac asks the smart question of, “Okay, why is no one taking this as good news?”

“Because if Jackson is dead,” Peter says, “then it didn’t _just_ happen. Gerard wanted it to happen.” When Derek asks why, he continues, “Well, that’s exactly what we need to figure out,” and takes a step forward. Scout takes a step back. “Something tells me the window of opportunity is closing. Quickly.”

A while ago, Scout devised a plan and the window for opportunity on that is closing quickly too. They make the move to leave and before they do, she grabs Derek’s arm. “I trusted you,” she says, and sounds more hurt than she wanted to.

“You trust people too easily and too often, Scout, even if you pretend you don’t,” he answers. “That’s always been your problem.”

 

 

Working with werewolves. Chris is working with _werewolves._

Then again, one of them is Scout McCall, whose morality he’s beginning to suspect the bite didn’t affect in the slightest. His father, on the other hand, is manipulating his daughter in the worse way than Kate tried and more successfully too, and he’s not willing to stand by and let that happen for a hunt. Here are two kids acting as living proof that his wife could have learned to control it, live with her _condition_ fine if only there was someone to teach her, but instead his father wormed his way so deeply into their lives that he appears to be the only one seeing sense. To protect Allison, Chris is willing to work with two teenagers whose species he grew up thinking his entire life of as the enemy because Scout took better care of Allison than half his family ever did.

Hell, maybe even better than he has these past few months, sneaking around or not.

So he helps load Jackson carefully in his much faster car with the Isaac kid in the back and Allison’s not-so-secret girlfriend sitting shotgun. “We learned how to save him, mostly,” Scout tells him once he hits the gas and speeds towards the address she gave him. “He’ll be a werewolf, but that he can control. Sorry to say, but it doesn’t matter what you think.”

Chris’ hands tighten on the steering wheel, but he doesn’t stop. This is too important—the job, and his question. “Can we trust Derek?” he asks, and she answers yes so fast he doesn’t know if it’s the truth or the wishful thinking of an optimistic kid. Because sixteen really is just a kid. “Can I trust you to answer me honestly about something then, Scout?”

“Yes, I kept up a relationship with your daughter.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

From the back seat, Isaac says, “Is about your wife?”

Scout twists around. “I’m smaller, but I’m faster, Isaac. Don’t you—”

“She saw them kiss,” the boy continues. “Tried to—”

“I mean it—”

“—kill Scout with vaporized wolf’s bane. Derek is more protective over her than he is over me, and I’m part of his pack. It was an accident.”

Even though Chris wants to pull over to the side of the road, scream at them that they’re sick and they’re lying and his wife wouldn’t do that, the small voice in the back of his head is reminding him that Victoria’s father used vaporized wolf’s bane as a form of interrogative torture. That it was practically a patented technique of that family and even Derek Hale is too young to know about it. Which means his wife stuck a sixteen-year-old girl in a small room and tried to suffocate her to death, only to leave a note that Gerard twisted for his own personal gain.

He’s not going to tell Allison to spare her the pain of knowing her mother’s decision, but he’ll never think of hunting the same way again, either, and this is a problem he needs to solve on his own.

 

 

“DEREK!”

Scout’s seen her friend stabbed in the stomach before and live, had thrown him under the bus last time, but there’s something particularly horrible about watching _Jackson_ do it. And she doesn’t even have time to help him before Gerard says, “Like the concerned friend you are, you brought Jackson to Derek to save him, but what you didn’t realize is that you were also bringing Derek to me,” and Isaac goes down with an arrow in his shoulder.

That’s too friends out of commission, and her left alone with Peter and Chris Argent for help. Then she connects the dots and— “ _Allison?_ ”

When she loses track of Allison, she doesn’t have time to care, because Mr. Argent begins shooting and she’s dragging Isaac away and then Derek’s back and Peter’s doing fucking nothing and Jackson is fighting Gerard’s battle for him. She surges forward too, good enough-ish despite being a Beta to put a good effort, and nearly gets Jackson down from behind. Thank god Stiles isn’t here right now. She doesn’t know what she would do if he was, stuck here in harm’s way like that.

But—but then Allison takes down Isaac completely instead of helping against a fight against a giant lizard monster, removing one team player from the board. She goes after Derek, so Scout calls her name (useless, useless, _useless_ ), but it’s Gerard that gets to her first, making Jackson wrap his hand around her neck. “Not yet, sweetheart,” he says, stepping into the light.

“What are you doing?” Allison asks because Mr. Argent was right and Gerard brainwashed her more soundly than Kate ever managed to.

Scout, though, figured out his intended endgame a long time ago. “What he came here to do.”

“Then you know?” Just because she’s a teenager with bad grades doesn’t mean she’s a total idiot. It just means she doesn’t have time to study. “It was the night outside the hospital when I threatened your mother,” he continues. “I knew I saw something in your eyes. You could smell it, couldn’t you?”

 _Can_ smell would be a better way to put it. Isaac says, “He’s dying.”

“I am,” he admits like it’s easy. “Have been for a while now. Unfortunately, science doesn’t have a cure for cancer yet.” His eyes wander down to Derek, who still lies on the floor. “But the supernatural does.”

Allison is crying. Of course she is. When Mr. Argent says he’s a monster, it’s probably the scariest he’s ever been since the day he shoved a gun in her face because it all makes sense; Gerard convinced his wife to commit suicide, after all. “You’ll kill her too?” he says when Jackson’s grip on her neck tightens. Scout tries to estimate how fast she can get there to how fast Jackson is and the odds aren’t good enough to risk.

“When it comes to survival, I’d kill my own _son._ ” Then Gerard looks to her. “Scout.”

This is going to work, she tells herself as she advances on her friend, and it feels like the biggest lie she’s ever told. She grabs Derek by the neck, ignoring how horrified everyone looks and his protests and Gerard’s _fucking unnecessarily manipulative speech_ , before she forces the bite.

The effect isn’t instantaneous, but it looks like it’s painful when it fails, and it might make her a sadistic freak, but for a moment, that’s all that really matters. “Everyone always said Gerard had a plan,” she says simply at everyone’s confused looks because she’s Scout without Stiles, which means she’s an idiot. It’s an assumption that hurts, actually. “I had a plan too.”

He scrambles to take out the pills, figures it out, crushes the capsules, and calls out the name of the curse she put through his veins the past few days before collapsing to the ground. Totally way too satisfying, even though the whole throwing up black blood thing is also absolutely disgusting.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Derek asks.

And she can’t tell if she’s ashamed or not when she answers, “Because you’re not my Alpha.”

 

 

“I told you, I scratched my cheek.”

"I can hear your heartbeat. No you didn’t.”

“Yes I did. That’s just adrenaline.”

Scout looks practically in tears, but even though Stiles doesn’t know the details, he pieces together pretty easy that today wasn’t good. “I should’ve been there,” she says, hands balling up in his shirt and face landing on his shoulder so her voice sounds muffled. “I’m so sorry, Stiles.”

He slips his arms around her and his head on top of hers. Earlier he got the shit beat out of him by an old man and not too long ago had to watch Jackson and Lydia share a tender moment. When he says, “It doesn’t hurt anymore,” he isn’t lying.

Then she repeats, “I’m sorry,” three times in a row.

Stiles thinks it’s about more than just his cheek.

 

 

For the entirety of their breakup, Scout holds her hand, and that makes Allison feel even worse. She had someone this wonderful walk into her life, all golden eyes and sweet smiles, and she blew it all away over revenge brought on by a family member she barely knew. “How can any of this be okay?” she asks.

Scout gives her hand a squeeze. “Because you’ve had it rough these past few weeks,” she answers, “and right now I’m the last person you need.”

This is so not true, but Allison leans over and kisses her anyway. Maybe one day they’ll get back together, or maybe one day she’ll fall in love with someone else, but even if the latter happens, there will always be part of her that loves Scout McCall unconditionally.

 

 

Mom’s in the kitchen with Stiles, both eating soup when she enters. There’s a moment of awkward silence before her friend stands up, takes her hand, and says, “Come on, we’re going to play lacrosse.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Mom says, looking between the two of them, but she’s smart so she must’ve figured it out too. “It’s late. You’re both hurt.”

Except for that time that Mrs. Argent almost killed her, Scout doesn’t think much about getting banged up anymore. Even getting shot in the stomach isn’t such a big deal. “The field has flood lights for Stiles,” she answers, “and I can see in the dark.”

Stiles adds, “Besides, tomorrow’s the first day of summer vacation.”

Maybe it’s just because the day was hell in general, or because Scout’s got the breakup look on her face, but Mom sighs. “I at least want you here when I wake up in the morning.”

“Two for the price of one, probably,” her friend says, and leads her over to the front door. “See you in the morning, Melissa!”

“Stay safe, kids!”

They play lacrosse for hours, and Scout purposely leaves her phone at home. When she gets back, she has a text from Allison saying her now ex-girlfriend is spending the summer away from Beacon Hill, and she’ll see her in September. She doesn’t answer, and she and Stiles fall into bed together, still dressed in their uniforms, with her face pressed against his shoulder.

 

 

Less than a week into summer vacation and Lydia is going crazy from boredom, so she calls up Scout. For all her life she’s been the most popular girl in school, surrounded by people but not really _liking_ any of them—but then Allison came along, and dragged these two geeks them. She hadn’t intended to become friends with them, too.

“Do you have a bathing suit?” she asks, glancing outside her window. Her whole world might’ve been turned upside down a few days ago and now her best friend is gone but that doesn’t mean she has to shut herself in her room and become a hermit.

From over the line, she hears Stiles laugh. “ _Yeah,_ ” answers Scout, sounding confused but Lydia doesn’t care. This is the girl she’s now shared frozen yogurt with twice; they’re allowed to go swimming together.

And if Stiles has to come along—well, she can think of worse ways to spend an afternoon. “Great,” she says, running over to her drawer to pick out her best set. “I have a pool, you have a bathing suit. Cancel whatever plans you have. You’re coming over. Bring Stiles.”

“ _Hold on._ ” There’s a pause, and then she can hear Scout’s voice but it’s muffled like the phone’s pressed to her shirt before the girl comes back and says, “ _We’ll be there in like a half hour. Just have to stop at my place and get mine._ ”

They hang up and Lydia heads downstairs to tell her parents to expect the doorbell to ring. Mom says she’ll make lemonade, which she is absolutely not going to complain about because Scout and Stiles might be geeks but hey, one’s a werewolf and the other can keep up with her intelligence at her normal level, so maybe she’s willing to spend the summer with two people who actually like her for once.

 

 

Scout makes an agreement with herself to become a better student, friend, and daughter over the summer, so she spends time sitting on her bedroom floor reading books or using websites to help with subjects like math and history. Of course, she spends a lot of time with her friends too, but both Stiles and Lydia seem to get a kick out of helping her with stuff, and she’s helping Derek teach Isaac control because it’s a little different for a turned werewolf than it is for someone who was born with it. Erica and Boyd are still missing and she’s about ninety percent sure something else freaky’s going on, but Derek is practically forcing her out of the issue. Whatever the issue is.

She’s never late for work. By the time the summer’s up, she can spit back facts about a bunch of books besides _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , which she considers her own, is pretty good at econ and can write a relatively decent paper, and Stiles taught her a lot about American and European history. To Lydia’s great disappointment, she still can’t seem to get her mind around chemistry or biology at _all_ , and completely sucks at math, but she could be a worse. That, and she’s manages not to text Allison. Or call her. Spending almost every waking moment busy probably has something to do with that, but it takes a lot of determination in general.

Also, she’s officially an semi-expert when it comes to bows/crossbow weaponry and normal wolves. Know thy enemy and know thyself or whatever, she figures.

As congratulations a few days before school starts, Lydia buys her a gorgeous yellow summer dress, and they make fun of the fact that Jackson moved to London.

Really, Scout kind of loves having friends. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I know I changed the breakup dialogue! Scallison might be basically my OTP of all OTPs for both Scott and Allison, but in this Scott and Stiles are endgame. I couldn't write the word "fate." Please forgive me.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As if she really thought junior year was going to be any easier than the one before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next part unfortunately won't come out until the season ends, but here's 3A!

First day back in Beacon Hill and Allison’s got a concerned Scott right in her face because a suicidal deer just ran straight through Lydia’s windshield.

Story of her life.

 

 

Considering that Lydia was supposed to pick her up for school but now her car is totaled so Allison is picking _her_ up and nothing can change the fact that Stiles lives in the opposite direction, Scout’s mom lets her borrow hers until Lydia’s is fixed. And maybe that’s a good thing, because Lydia is talking to Allison when she and Stiles arrive at school, and she’s still a novice as to how the whole breakup deal works. Last time was a little different.

Okay, so more like really different. She’s got a feeling this time they aren’t getting back together, even though every time she looks at her she can’t _breathe_ , and she doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. Probably bad, she figures.

To make matters worse, Allison takes the seat is front of her in class and Scout’s heart is beating so fast she bets Derek can hear it across town. “Totally vacant,” she says with a smile before everyone’s phones go off and the teacher enters and something tells her that this is going to be a very, very long year.

 

 

“Are you going to tell me who that was back there?” Scout asks once they’re back at his old place, crossing her arms and leaning all her weight one hip like a normal teenage girl. “That Alpha?”

He’s spent the entire summer trying to keep her in the dark. She’s not part of his pack, so technically she’s not his problem—though hopefully that hospital skirmish gets the message across to the rest of them that if they fuck with her or Isaac, it’s him they have to deal with. “The rival pack,” he answers because he can’t hide it now that she’s seen it with her own eyes, but that doesn’t mean she needs to get involved. “It’s my problem. I know you want to help, and you did. I owe you one. Now go home. Go back to being a teenager.”

But of course she’s Scout fucking McCall, so she doesn’t run back just because he said so. “Then I’m calling in that favor right now,” she says. “Isaac’s my friend. Let me at least help you.”

Well, they’re waiting for Stiles, and this is faster with two anyway. “Fine,” he says reluctantly, and hands over half the bundle. “Start crushing.”

She does, and it takes ten minutes instead of twenty. Scout might be an idiot, but she’s a hard one to hate.

 

 

Within the first five seconds, the party is awkward, which has to be record time, because Heather’s smile just _falls_ when she sees them. “Stiles!” she says after a beat, smile returning like nothing happened. “And…Scout? I thought you’d be a boy.”

Scout’s wearing this tight, white lacey top and a short black skirt and even though she’s a chick and his best friend, Stiles doesn’t actually know a lot about the opposite gender, but he’s pretty sure the look on Heather’s face is jealousy. Well, this is uncomfortable. “My name’s not even androgynous,” his friend says, sounding as resigned as usual when she has to explain. “It’s female-specific.”

One of Heather’s friends laughs. “I warned you, sweetheart,” she says. “Same name as the main character of that book from English class last year.”

Now Scout’s cheeks are flushed red, and she’s got tan-ish skin, so it’s a damn accomplishment getting her to blush. “Allison’s been calling like nonstop,” she tells him. “I should probably go see what that’s about.”

"But we—”

“It’s got to be important,” she continues. “Um, I’ll see you later.”

If this is an Allison wanting to get back together thing, he should probably leave her to it (even though lately the idea of that has been causing some spikes of jealousy of his own that he doesn’t want to admit, too), so he answers, “Yeah…I’ll swing by.”

There’s another awkward pause after she shuts the door behind her before Heather asks, “So what, was that your girlfriend or just your friend?”

“Scout’s just my friend.”

Heather’s got her mouth on his before he can add anything else.

Well, there are worse ways to spend an evening.

 

 

For the first time possibly ever, Scott’s actually able to raise her hand in econ because she knows the answer. Stiles shoots her an encouraging little smile and she expects Coach to call on her but instead all he says is, “Yes, McCall, you can go to the bathroom. Anybody else?”

Oh. Awesome. “No, Coach, I know the answer.”

Coach laughs right there, in front of the whole class, and even without her hearing as good as it is, she doesn’t need to look around to know there are other people laughing too. “Oh, you’re serious,” he says when he realizes she isn’t smiling.

“Well, yes,” she answers, and tries not to look anywhere but the front of the room. “Risk and reward.”

Suddenly everyone is staring at her, even if it means turning around in their seats, and Coach moves straight forward, saying, “Wow, who _are_ you and what have you done to McCall?” which is just about the most embarrassing thing to happen to her since, well, Saturday night. “Don’t answer that. I like you better. I like you better.”

One of the worst feelings in the world is realizing people never really liked you even when they just started to like you, she thinks, and wants to hide her head in her hands.

 

 

Last year Scout and Stiles managed to match up their schedules perfectly so they had the same free period, but with the introduction of AP classes, that didn’t happen this time. Even so, she has it with Lydia and she feels kind of awful about this because the girl they’re discussing is missing, but this isn’t the kind of thing she can talk about with Stiles anyway.

“I mean, I get it, she wanted to sleep with him,” she says, taking a seat across from Lydia on one of the outside picnic tables. “But—I don’t know. Maybe I’m just sick of everyone assuming I’m guy.”

Now that Allison is back in town, their dynamic is different, and Scout isn’t sure what that means, but as Lydia isn’t her ex-girlfriend, that still marks her as the only one she can talk to about stuff like this. “You’re hot, and thanks to me dress cute,” her friend answers, redoing the braid in her hair. “It’s not that she assumed you were a boy; she saw you as competition.”

The only competition Scout’s ever been has been against Jackson with Allison because the guy was playing her, and that wasn’t even a relationship thing. Lydia might’ve semi-broken her from the habit of wearing Stiles’ shirts and lacrosse and being a werewolf admittedly gave her a good body, but that does nothing for her face. More than once people have looked at her and assumed she was like thirteen. “That’s ridiculous,” she says, because it’s true and she can’t think of anything else. “God, I shouldn’t even be complaining. There’s too much else to worry about. And I’m sorry Derek was rude earlier. I still think you guys are right.”

“You don’t need to apologize for Derek,” Lydia says. “There’s no cure for being such a dick.” Scout laughs, and this girl doing her homework looks up and glares before moving. Should’ve been in the library if she wanted a quiet study period. “Anyway,” her friend continues, “do you really believe us or do you just want to believe us because it’s Allison who said it?”

She feels the smile slide off her face. “No, I really believe you,” she says, and honestly means it too. Gerard might’ve driven Allison kind of crazy, but she’s usually right. “And I’m pretty sure we’re broken up broken up, not just taking a break broken up. Not that I’m very good reading people.”

“You know what I think?” She looks up. “I think you need to stop worrying and have some fun. The four of us and a movie, since you’re boring and can’t drink like a normal person.”

“Let me and Stiles help Derek find the rest of his pack,” she answers. “Then we can have some fun.”

Fun was a word stuck solidly in her vocabulary this summer. Now she’s already feeling it slip through her fingers, and it all started with the party of a missing girl.

 

 

Allison pauses and looks from Scout and Stiles, who stand talking outside, to Lydia. “I thought Stiles lived too far away to pick her up,” she says, confused, because they both just got out of the Jeep.

Glancing behind them, Lydia tells her, “She probably stayed the night. Why else would she be wearing his shirt and the same jeans as yesterday?”

His clothes, and over his house. “Wait,” she asks, “did they start dating and no one’s told me?”

“Scout and Stiles? Dating?” her friend answers. “I’m pretty sure it would take a bout of total insanity to get the two of them to get together. Why, are you still interested?”

“I don’t know.” She thought about it all summer, too. And every day since she came back. Because this is Scout, and she loves her. But at the same time, this is Scout, and Allison had nightmares for weeks about her taking Erica’s place, full of arrows on the grass and screaming for her to stop, and she doesn’t think she’d ever be able to touch her again without imagining her body full of scars. After a moment, she says, “It’s not a good idea.”

With a shrug, Lydia says, “Whatever makes you happy.”

When they were dating, Allison had a thing about pining Scout to the bed. Hindsight is twenty-twenty and that was foreshadowing she didn’t understand.

 

 

Being so small definitely has it perks, and Scout is able to slip though the vent and into vault like it’s nothing. The Alpha pack probably isn’t expecting a simple Beta to help, so she’s hoping that even her little bit of power will work to their advantage, but all it takes it one broken wall and a call from Stiles to remind her that she’s eternally fucked over. Allison only makes it worse.

Before Derek can freak out too badly, Scout grabs the back of his shirt. “She saved our lives,” she says, and can already feel the wounds—internal and external—stitching themselves back together. Even not in her werewolf shape, she’s never had trouble against Boyd one on one like that before.

“Yeah, and what do you think they’re going to do out there?” Derek snaps at her before turning back to Allison. “Do you have any idea what we just set free?”

With her voice rising, she answers, “You want to blame me? Well, I’m not the one turning teenagers into killers!”

Terrific. Her ex-girlfriend and her not-Alpha are fighting and Scout’s standing here clutching her stomach. “No,” Derek says before Allison can walk away, “no, that’s just the rest of your family.”

“I made mistakes,” she says, stopping and turning back around. “Gerard was not my fault.”

“And what about your mother?”

What the fuck is up with people and spilling this very delicate piece of information to the people she doesn’t want others knowing about it? Allison asks what he means and Derek looks to Scout to answer so after a moment of deliberation, she decides she’s too badly cornered and says, “On the night we were at the rave trying to get Jackson, your mom hit me by a car and brought me to this…room thing with a vaporizer. She stuck wolf’s bane in it. Derek was protecting me. He does that sometimes.”

For a moment Allison doesn’t do anything, lips just pressed today and standing absolutely still. “She tried killing you,” she says eventually, and it isn’t a question. Scout nods, and can’t look her in the eye. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ll tell you anything,” she promises, “anything and everything you want to know, but right now—”

“Just tell me why.”

Scout looks down at her feet again, shuffles the front of her shoe against the dusty floor, and they don’t have time for this. “I couldn’t,” she answers, and decides to leave out that Mr. Argent already knows. “Allison, I couldn’t let that be the last memory you had of her.”

Derek returns, though Scout barely registered that he even left, and he’s got Erica dead in his arms. “We’re going right now,” he says, voice tight. “Before Boyd and Cora die too.”

 

 

Chris promised himself no more hunting, but some poor kid is dead by a pool and while a small part of him still wants to shoot Scout, another small part of him also feel like he owes something to her after what his wife did. So here he is, in the middle of the woods at night, helping a pack of werewolves chase down two others.

Tracking is easier than usual. “How can you tell the difference between our footprints and theirs?” Isaac asks at one point.

“I tracked Derek for a long time,” he answers, “and the floor to my house is carpeted—I know Scout’s prints, too. Yours are always with theirs, so I track the others. Just focus on the stakes.”

None of them look at happy with having the turn on the frequencies, and he has to admit to being maybe a little too satisfied about that.

 

 

Isaac and Derek throw her on locking door duty because apparently being small matters this time around for some reason, and she barely catches sight of Allison before the other girl is gone.

Rather than call out and possibly disrupt the mission, Scout decides to deal with it tomorrow, and gets back in through a window. Right when she makes it back downstairs, Derek’s going inside after Boyd and Cora while Isaac is bolting the door again, and he won’t let her go inside to help no matter how hard she struggles.

 

 

Later, Isaac walks Scout to work. He doesn’t have to or anything, but she looks like she’s in a bad mood after last night (he isn’t much better) and Derek can be kind of dick when he’s hurt. Besides, he has Boyd and his apparent supposedly dead sister Cora to take care of.

So, Scout it is.

He really isn’t expecting it when she suddenly says, “I’m sorry about before,” roughly fifteen minutes into the walk. “I hit you pretty hard.”

Considering that she straight up denounced herself as part of the pack in front of _everyone_ only like two months, he finds her relationship with Derek kind of weird. Then again, maybe it’s because she’s not part of the pack that she gets that worked up; she doesn’t have that instinctive need to listen to him as her Alpha or anything.

“We’ve got super healing, it’s fine,” he says, because he says. “Besides, it’s not like you tried too hard—if you’d shifted, I’m pretty sure you could’ve ripped me open if you wanted.”

She shrugs. “Still. I shouldn’t have hit you.”

For pretty obvious reasons, people treat him like he’s glass sometimes. He thinks that she of all people should see how fucking annoying it is, though. From the way Stilinski will step in front of her when she’s the one with the power to tear people’s throats out is a pretty big sign she isn’t a stranger to this stuff, either. Then again, maybe that’s the problem, he thinks, and says, “It’s better than you getting inside. You saw how banged up he was, and you’re just a Beta.”

“Well, worse, technically,” she tells him. “By werewolf hierarchy or whatever, I guess I classify as an Omega.”

“What?” He knows the term, but he’s never heard Derek or anyone else call her that before.

“Isaac, I don’t have a pack,” she says, and raises an eyebrow. “I wonder if Derek doesn’t call me that because he doesn’t want to make you feel bad about yourself.”

Confused, he asks, “What do you mean?”

She answers, “Because I’m supposed to be the worst of the worst and I can still kick your ass,” and he realizes she’s just fucking with him.

He rolls his eyes and shoves her shoulder _hard._ “Get to work, idiot,” he says, pushing her in the direction of the side road of the animal clinic. Though she doesn’t apologize again, she looks like wants to, and he waits until she’s inside before leaving to go find his pack.

 

 

Boyd and Cora are safe, but Scout forgets to talk to Allison because all the sudden people are dying and a man at work went missing. “I looked everywhere,” she tells Stiles as they stand a little off to the side, tying her shoes. Cross country meets are done in two separate divisions for boys and girls, but in practices at Beacon Hill they get to run together because like lacrosse, the teams have got the same coach. Who’s just Coach. “He left his car, his keys, his dog.”

“Okay,” Stiles says, though he sounds strangely nervous, and pulls his sweater over his head. “Okay, could he have been a virgin maybe? Did he look like a virgin? Was he virginal?”

God, he’s adorable sometimes, which probably isn’t a thought that makes any sense when they’re talking about guy going missing, but so much weird shit happens around them she’s learned to shut part of it out. “Definitely not,” she answers. “Deaton makes me have sex with all of his clients. It’s a new policy.” Unfortunately, Stiles doesn’t seem to find it funny. She sighs, and says, “No, I don’t know if he’s a virgin. And why are you talking like he’s already dead? He’s just missing.”

Even as she says it, she knows that Stiles is usually right and she probably shouldn’t be surprised if a corpse pops up soon. “Missing and presumed dead,” he says, “because he was probably a virgin, Scout, and you know who else is virgin? Me. I’m a virgin, okay? You know what that means? It means that my lack of sexual experience is literally a threat to my life.”

"Stiles, I might be considered a virgin too,” she points out. “I’ve only ever had sex with Allison. As in, a girl. As in, I couldn’t lose my virginity by society’s standards. Nothing but fingers.”

Then Stiles, completely not laughing and probably completely not thinking, says, “We need someone to sex us right now.”

And of course, _of course_ this is the only bit of conversation Danny hears. “Just do it together,” he says. “Remember to use protection, kids.”

Oh, this is so not happening. “Please tell me you’re joking,” she says.

“Just make sure you do it before the end of next month,” he continues, ignoring her. “Otherwise I own Greenberg twenty dollars.”

He walks away, leaving Scout and Stiles to stand flustered next to each other under a big oak tree, trying to avoid eye contact so as not to make this any worse. Because she totally, absolutely, has not had even one dream about having sex with her best friend.

 

 

Really, Isaac understands that Scout was never in the pack, that Erica and Boyd spent a lot of time fighting against her instead of with her, but the chick seems pretty big into helping out everyone she possibly can, so he doesn’t understand why she keeps holding him back from kicking the twin’s asses. Sure, they’re Alphas which means that yeah, they can probably kill him, but right now he doesn’t care. They _killed_ Erica. They took _his_ memories, they basically tortured Boyd by locking him up like that and what is she going to do? Sit around and let them continue on like it’s nothing? Like Stiles is right and the murders aren’t their fault? They’ve already shown that they’re fine and dandy with killing innocent people.

So he raises his hand and asks Mr. Harris if he can go to the bathroom. All he gets out of it are injuries and detention.

Scout insists they’re just trying to get to him. “It’s not just me,” he says, and nods in the direction of the straight one chatting up pretty little Lydia over there by her locker. The girl brushes him off easy enough, but Scout’s got her hands balled at her side and as horrible as it is, Isaac’s always thought she looks funny angry. Looking her up and down, he adds, “Now they’re getting to you.”

“Stay out of trouble,” she stays, readjusting the books in her arms. “I have to go to my next class.”

All’s fair in love and war. He wonders what she’ll do if the twins go after Allison.

He doesn’t even want to think about she’d do if they went after Stiles instead.

 

 

Then they do get Allison hurt, and scare the hell out of him.

Scout has them take apart the twins’ bikes and Isaac gets to stand back and watch them get _really_ angry.

 

 

“So Harris is missing along with a music teacher,” Stiles says slowly, “and you watched the two twins—one of which is hardcore hitting on Lydia—morph into a giant Alpha only to be stopped by the blind guy you met in the hospital elevator?”

Carding her fingers through her hair, Scout answers, “ _Yeah, I guess that about sums up the day._ ” They’re talking over Skype because it’s raining and disgusting and today’s sucked too much for either of them to want to go out in this weather. Besides, according to her, rain aggravates her sense of smell now. “ _We’re stuck not being able to do anything until tomorrow, though. I won’t be able to track anyone like this._ ”

“Do you think Derek will?” he asks. “You know, being an Alpha and all.”

Scout just shakes her head. “ _One of the other Alphas in the pack came and basically beat the shit out of him and his sister today. Peter wasn’t there for it or whatever, but he was there when I called and Derek was getting all cryptic and annoyingly vague, so he took the phone and gave a_ graphic _description of what he found when Cora called him for help._ _He’d been stabbed through the back with a pipe._ ”

Oh, wow. These guys aren’t fucking around. Then again, they probably aren’t sacrificing people either, which means he and his friends are once again dealing with two killers. “Your boss is annoyingly vague, too,” he says. “It’s like pulling teeth getting information out of that guy. I thought you were exaggerating.”

“ _See, I told you! Also, he won’t explain to me why mistletoe will kill me the same way it will a dog, but I can eat chocolate like a normal person._ ”

Stiles shrugs one shoulders. “Don’t ask me. But be happy you aren’t allergic to chocolate because imagine if you died that way. I’d have to put _death by chocolate_ on your tombstone.”

The fact that she actually laughs at that shows how desensitized they are to this stuff by now. “ _Right_ ,” she says. “ _Anyway, I better go. Blake’s homework won’t do itself._ ”

They disconnect their Skype call and he starts on his homework, too. Midway through he gives up and starts researching “Darach”instead.

 

 

Isaac Lahey shows up at the door wet and cold from the rain, looking for a place to stay. Maybe it’s because he’s a werewolf like her daughter, or because his abusive father is dead and he has nowhere else to go, but she says yes, he can stay, to this practically-stranger almost immediately after his one tentative request.

“It’s not like anyone ever uses the guest room,” she says, looking between him and Scout, who stands there in an oversized shirt big enough to act like a nightgown that Melissa knows she didn’t buy, which means it can only be one person’s.

The poor kid lets out what he thinks is a subtle sigh of relief. “Stiles stays over a lot and doesn’t seem to like the front door, so don’t be surprised if he randomly shows up,” Scout adds.

There’s a moment of confusion where Melissa can tell Isaac isn’t getting it because, well, their situation with Stiles _is_ a weird one, so she says, “If he stays over, it’s usually because they fall asleep in the middle of something, so you don’t need to worry about him ever wanting to use your room,” as clarification. Then she turns to her daughter and says, “And that’s not true. He’s been using the front door a lot more lately.”

“Yeah, that’s only because you _grounded_ me from him that one time.”

“How was I supposed to know Jackson was a lizard on a killing streak? Besides, I like it better this way.” She looks back up at Isaac. “The bathroom is across from the guest room too, if you want to take a shower to wash off the rain.”

He smiles gratefully. “Thank you,” he says, and lets Scout lead him upstairs.

Melissa wonders if this counts as collecting strays.

 

 

One minute she’s got Scout pinning her to the floor, and both them are actually laughing even though Allison knows she just got her ass kicked in about five seconds flat. Then they realize the position they’re in and the other girl jumps off her so fast it should be considered impossible even by werewolf standards.

When Scout reaches out her arm to help Allison off the floor, her hand is shaking. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Just—look, these guys scare the hell out of me. And I think they should scare you too.”

Before she can say anything, Scout’s gone. Allison wonders if her ex-girlfriend ever looks at her and sees her mom instead.

 

 

The point of this was to talk to the Alpha pack alone, and now there’s a fight. Now there’s a fight, and that’s Derek falling.

Scout reaches out her hand to catch him, but falls too short, and he crashes to the stairs below.

 

 

Cora tries to jump her the moment the Alphas all gone, but since they’re all beat to hell, Isaac and Boyd grab onto the girl before the she can. “She was right there!” she screams as Scout lays twisted on the penthouse floor, Derek’s body below and blood dripping from her side. “She could have grabbed him!”

“It was their fault, not hers,” Boyd says, still gripping onto Cora’s arm and Isaac pulls away. Scout gets herself up before he has to help her do it. “Don’t try to go after one of the good guys.”

Right now Scout doesn’t feel so much like a good guy. Isaac tells the other two to get to the animal clinic because they’ve got medical supplies of their own back at the house. “You just don’t want me around Cora,” she says and the side Ennis’ claws caught burns. They almost brought her with him for that fall, which means she could’ve grabbed Derek and Isaac knows it too. Whether or not they could’ve made it out is still debatable.

“We’ve got the cross country meet in twelve hours with Ethan,” he says instead of answers, dodging the unspoken question of why he isn’t going after her too. “We’ll be healed by then.”

It doesn’t matter if they’re dead or not. Derek’s gone and it’s all her fault and it easily could’ve been her instead.

 

 

After a while on the bus, Stiles grabs hold of his friend’s hand because she keeps tensing up. The way her grip will tighten and loosen reminds him of an erratic pulse, and even before the wound starts bleeding again, this acts as a pretty big sign that regardless of what she said, those cuts aren’t healing. Actually, they’re getting worse. Like, a lot worse, and it doesn’t make sense because Isaac and Boyd are fine.

Or maybe that’s because they weren’t suicidally stupid enough to go against Mr. Apex of Apex Predators the way she did (Isaac didn’t leave out any details once Melissa was out of the room).

But when Boyd starts moving like he’s going to do something, she gets up anyway. On more normal abnormal occasions, he’s started to think of her outstanding leadership qualities as kind of hot, but right he’s just afraid she’s going to tip over and fall on Ethan. The guy even looks like he’s prepared to catch her if that happens.  

Whatever she does works, and she stumbles back over. The members of the girl’s team are all chatting loudly and most of the members of the boys are watching Jared apprehensively, waiting for The Moment to come. Everyone except Ethan, who keeps checking his phone, so Stiles spams Danny with text messages until he replies. When he finds out one the Alphas is still alive and the Coach won’t stop the bus, he does what he can and calls Lydia.

“What can they do?” Scout asks, leaning all her weight against him. Definitely has a fever, too. Can werewolves get infections? Her blood sure looks like it right now. “They’re back in Beacon Hill.”

Considering her side is currently sliced to shreds, he’ll give her a pass on not noticing. “No, they aren’t,” he tells her. “They’ve been following us since we got on the bus.”

Scout doesn’t answer, which is probably a bad sign. Lydia, on the other hand, does. “ _Hey, Stiles_ ,” she says, voice higher than usual as she prepares an obvious lie, “ _we were just heading into a movie—_ ”

“No, you guys are right behind us,” he cuts in, getting straight to the point because this is serious. “Put me on speaker.”

“ _Uh, yeah, okay_.”

The moment he hears the extra noises to alert him she did it, he says, “Okay, look, Scout’s still hurt.”

“ _What do you mean, still hurt?_ ” Allison asks. “ _She’s not healing?_ ”

“No, she’s not healing.” He ignores when Scout glares at him for what she probably perceives as over exaggerating the situation, but it comes out weak because she’s gone kind of an ashen color and the grip on his hand is loose. “I actually think she’s getting worse. The blood’s turning like a black color.”

Lydia says, “ _What’s wrong with her?_ ”

“What’s wrong with her?” He knows he shouldn’t be getting annoyed, but he is. “How am I supposed to know? I don’t have a PhD in lycanthropy.”

Then Allison cuts in, “ _We need to get her off the bus_ ,” which was basically the point of this call.

“ _And take her where? The hospital?_ ”

“ _If she’s dying, yeah._ ” No, no, no Scout is _not_ dying on him. “ _Stiles, there’s a rest stop about a mile up. Tell the coach to pull over._ ”

Scout’s eyes go from glaring to actually closed. Fuck. “Yeah, I’ve been trying.”

“ _Reason with him._ ”

“Reason with him?” he repeats. “Have you met this guy?”

“ _Just try something._ ”

After he disconnects the line, he carefully maneuvers Scout so she’s leaning against the window instead of him. Time to pull a miracle.

 

 

When Stiles said her side was slashed up, Allison wasn’t expecting to wound that stretched from Scout’s underwire to hipline, or that it wrapped around back to front. She’s barely conscious in the beginning, but completely out by the time the stitching actually starts, which is probably a good thing considering Allison is talking to herself.

Then she’s done, and at first Scout’s not breathing. She starts up again the same moment she opens her eyes, which would good thing if she didn’t instantly say, “It’s my fault.”

Allison runs her fingers lightly over the stitches, still in disbelief that she did it correctly. “It’s okay,” she says quietly, pushing the other girl’s bangs out of her face.

“Did you do that?” Scout asks, looking at the stitches too. Allison nods. “Nice.”

She lets out a short laugh because god, she’s just so relieved right now. For what feels like the first time in weeks, she did something right. “Can you stand?” she says, and Scout says she thinks so, so Allison helps her up. After, she pulls her top shirt over her head, leaving just an undershirt on, and hands it over because it isn’t covered in blood. “Okay, put this on.”

Scout does without question, and lets her help her get outside.

           

 

Even though he’s a guy and she’s a girl, Coach absolutely breaks the rules and hands Stiles a key for a room with Scout. Stiles wonders who on the team had enough money to bride him into letting there be a co-ed room instead of shoving her with Allison and Lydia or one of her actual teammates. And he knows it’s a bribe because they don’t get an additional “if I catch you two fornicating…” that the two teams already got as a whole.

People really have to stop trying to shove the two of them together. It doesn’t help that lately the way he’s been looking at her has definitely changed.

When they get into the room, she throws her stuff on the floor, but he grabs her by the arm and pulls her down next to him before she use the other bed. “So about the Darach murderer,” he says conversationally, and she rolls her eyes at the transition. “I have four suspects.”

The ceiling is cracked and old and gross. She tilts her head so it’s leaning against his shoulder. “Four? You have four suspects?”

“Yeah, it was originally ten,” he tells her, and kicks off his shoes. “Well, nine, technically, I guess—I had Derek on their twice.”

And again with the eye roll. She might be his best friend, but she’s still a brat. “Who’s number one?” she asks. “Harris?”

With a nod, he answers, “Just ‘cause he’s missing doesn’t mean he’s dead.”

“So if he’s not dead,” she says, “then our chemistry teacher is out secretly committing human sacrifices.” The way said it doesn’t imply any question marks, at least.

Then he really thinks about it. “Yeah, I guess that sounded way better in my head.”

Scout fidgets and tilts her head up to look up him. He seriously wonders if she _realizes_ how close she gets sometimes. “What if it’s someone else from the school?” she says. “Matt was proof a teenager can do something like this.” She pauses before adding, “Actually, _we_ prove teenagers can do something like this. Who’re the other three?”

“First is Derek’s sister, Cora,” he answers. “No one knows anything about her and she’s Derek’s sister. Next, your boss.” She sits straight up and stares down at him, mouth open. “Yeah, your boss,” he continues. “I don’t really like the whole Obi Wan thing he’s got going. Freaks me out—oh my god, have you still not seen _Star Wars?_ ”

“I swear, if we make it back alive, I will marathon them with you,” she says. “Who’s the last one?”

As much as it pains him to says, he tells her, “Lydia. She was totally controlled by Peter and she had no idea, so…”

For a moment, Scout doesn’t answer, just flops right back down. “If it were my boss, he’d need a partner. I was with him at the time the fourth guy went missing. Actually, and I with Lydia when Heather was caught, too. And you were with her when Harris went missing.”

Yeah, Stiles doesn’t like thinking about Heather, for what should be obvious reasons. “Okay, so maybe not Lydia,” he says, and feels relieved about it. Two alibis aren’t entirely enough to knock her off his suspect list just because of what happened with Peter, but it’s enough. Then something occurs to him. “I was with Deaton that day, too. Puts Cora and Harris higher up on the suspicion scale.” He doesn’t mentioned that one of the reasons he dislikes Cora so much is because every time she looks at Scout, she gets this expression on her face like she wants to claw his friend’s heart out. And feed it to starving crows.

“We’ll figure it out,” Scout says after a moment. “Or, you will anyway. You always do.”

 

 

Red eyes. Every reflection she sees of herself has bright, bright red eyes.

To make it worse, her phone’s ringing off the hook, and it doesn’t matter that the person calling doesn’t have a name to identify it plugged into her phone, because she’s got that number forever stuck inside her head. It doesn’t matter that she turned the thing off, or that she’s got it under the pillow and her hands over ears and oh god, she wants Stiles, where’s Stiles? He made it better, _makes_ it—

But you’ll just get him killed, whispers that little voice in the back of her head. That’s what you do to people. Derek’s already dead because of you.

Shut up, she tells herself.

That little voice though keeps whispering, And if they don’t die, they get twisted somewhere along the way.

“Shut up,” she says out loud.

Everyone in the world is better off without you, Scout. Being an Alpha will only make things harder.

“Shut up,” she says, louder this time.

Open your eyes. You’ll see why your mother and friends are better off without you.

Her phone goes off again, buzzing shrill. “No.”

Do it, Scout. Open your eyes.

So she does, and for some reason she’s standing in the bathroom, but specifically in front of the bathroom mirror, and staring back at her are bright, bright red eyes. And in that moment she doesn’t see her eyes, or Derek’s eyes, but Peter’s living on her face and knows with a scary amount of certainty that if she stays an Alpha, she’ll go just as psychotic as he did.

Like Peter’s, says the little voice. What did Peter do?

“He burned.”

And her eyes are a bright, bright red.

 

 

Whatever this thing is, it’s smart. Stiles knows it’s smart because it went after Scott, who they care about the most, after they figure out the thing with the heat and the flares, and gave her the idea that the only way to die is to burn herself alive. Or at least he hopes that’s where she got the idea because if not, that’s years’ worth of therapy she never went to.

In the light of the flare, her yellow eyes look red. “Look, Scout,” he says, inching past Allison, “this isn’t you. This is someone inside your head telling you to do this, okay?”

She shakes her head, and gasoline drips down her face. “This isn’t,” she says. “This is just me. This is the best thing I can do for everyone else. It all started that night, that night I got bitten. You remember how it was before that? Just you and me, we were nothing. We weren’t popular, we weren’t good at lacrosse, we weren’t important, we were no one. I should just go back to being no one again, Stiles. No one at all.”

As her hand tilts to drop the stick, Stiles decides that if they’re going down, then they’re going down together, and steps forward. “Scout, just listen to me, okay?” he says, praying that somehow the magic of friendship will get past a Darach curse. It’s gotten past an Alpha’s voice once already. “You’re not no one, you’ve never been no one—not to me. I need you, you get that? Since the day you said you’re named after a book character and I invited you over for mac and cheese. So—” He steps forward, feels it when his foot hits the gasoline. “—if we’re going to do this, then you’re just going to have to take me with you.”

This close up, he can see how hard she’s crying, and he takes hold of the flare with her, pushing her hand down and throwing it off to the dry sidewalk. And she just stands there, tears running streaks through the gasoline on her face. Since she isn’t moving, he does it first, grabbing on and holding her tight because _this isn’t a nightmare._

He barely registers Lydia’s body slamming into the two of them when a fire ignites anyway.

 

 

After the incident with the motel, Scout isn’t immediately…okay. It’s like there’s something in her brain that’s clogging her depressing thoughts filter or something, because a very small part of her knows that the Darach didn’t just _create_ those thoughts. They had to come somewhere. The school guidance counselor would call it an internal source, probably. And that really, really scares her.

The fact that Stiles is hovering, and constantly looks like he wants to ask about it doesn’t help. Because not only did she almost commit suicide, but she almost took him with her. She can practically picture the headline in the Beacon Hill newspaper about a couple of kids who killed themselves together and the article would be covered with quotes from people in their school. It’s like she said: at one point, they were nobodies, and now they’re popular. Now they’re only juniors and nearly everyone in BHHS knows their names.

That’s not something she ever thought she’d hate. But really, she doesn’t know how Lydia does it.

Two days later, though, Stiles eventually does ask, “Why burning?”

They told her about everyone else. The others all had connections to something traumatic in their past, but not her. How fucked up is it that she doesn’t consider assisting in the murder of Peter Hale a traumatic experience? It’s not as bad as finding him alive. “Maybe because we’ve lit someone on fire before?” she says, and it sounds like a question because that’s exactly what it is. “I don’t know. Honestly, it’s probably because the Darach saved me for last and you already figured out that heat is what stopped it. Drenching me in gasoline pretty much made her cure-all null and void.”

Stiles looks a little sick at the reminder, but she feels the same way so she guesses that means it evens out. If Derek had died, it really would’ve been her fault.

Her friend doesn’t ask her what the Darach used for a catalyst.

She doesn’t tell him. Not yet, anyway.

 

 

Melissa wakes up to find both Scout and Isaac asleep in the corner of the room, instead of one awake as promised. “Really, you two?” she says, and her voice croaks a bit with exhaustion, so she clears her throat and says louder, “Kids!”

Isaac bolts awake in shock. Scout blinks her eyes open and mumbles, “I’m not a kid.”

Oh for the love of—Melissa ignores her daughter. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Twisting his body so he can look at Scout and then to her, Isaac answers, “Uh, we were watching over you.”

“We wanted to make sure you weren’t the third sacrifice,” her daughter adds, and rubs her eye.

So they were on watch. There is something wrong about this picture. “But you were both asleep,” she points out, not sure if she should be confused or amused.

Scout turns to Isaac. “You were on watch last.”

“What’re you talking about? You were on watch last.”

“No, you were on watch last.”

Looking back at Melissa, Isaac says, “I might have been on watch last,” with a look of dawning realization.

Like every teenager, he’s a bit of an idiot. Yet here they are, her heroes.

And she really loves them all.

 

 

When Stiles’ dad takes her statement, he doesn’t continue standing over her like he would for most witnesses, but pulls a chair around so he sits across and takes both her shaking hands in his.

“You need to calm down, Scout,” he says, and he has no idea how right he is. “Take a few deep breaths. It’s okay if it takes a minute.”

It does take a minute, because she’s forced to think up a plausible lie about why her boss would call her. He moves to sit next to her instead and wraps his arm around her when she’s done, and ignores the other cop’s surprised look when he calls his own son out of school to come get her instead of bringing her back himself like he should. She bites her nails the whole time, and he keeps his hold on her until Stiles arrives.

 

 

Stiles tells Cora to let go, but Scott is there fast enough to rip her off before she even has a chance to do it herself. “Rule number one when you’re on school grounds, sweetheart,” she says, back tense. “Touch anyone other than the twins, and I don’t care which friend of mine you’re related to. Just ask your brother and uncle how bad my claws hurt.”

That’s when the tapping starts, and either Cora’s hearing isn’t as good as hers or it’s all in her head, because Scout’s the only one that seems to register it. “Keep an eye on her,” she adds to Stiles and Lydia, and runs off to follow the noise.

 

 

Somehow she ends up trapped in a closet with Scout, and the two of them are trying hard not to giggle. It should be awkward, but it isn’t, and Allison kind of likes that.

 

 

By the time Scout finds him, it’s obvious enough that she knows. He’s normally not such a touchy-feely person, but when she wraps her arms around him, he hugs her right back. There’s still blood drying on his hands.

“I’m going to kill them,” he says, and his claws tear through her jacket. “I’m going to kill _her._ ”

For once, she doesn’t say how they should try to solve it the peaceful way, or whatever her philosophy is. Maybe tomorrow, but not today. Instead she holds him, and keeps on holding him long past the point where it’s probably considered a hug. “We’ll get out of this,” she says. “The Darach, the Alphas—we’ll figure it out. Like we always do. And this time without trying to kill each other, too.”

She’s a Beta without a pack (the word Omega has been used as an insult, so he won’t call her that even in his head), and he’s an Alpha whose pack is slowly getting picked off one by one. But he’s got Isaac, and he’s got Cora, and somehow Peter, and somewhat Scout.

If it comes to it, he’ll torture the entire other pack Argent-style if it means he won’t have to lose anyone else.

 

 

Scout beats him home. Stiles isn’t surprised.

What is surprising, though, is that it’s nearly eleven on a school night and Dad let her in through the front door instead of her sneaking through the window. “I’ve got something to tell you,” she says as he takes a seat on the bed too, facing her, “and I need you to promise not to freak out.”

Oh, no. Conversations that start out like that aren’t good. “Scout, I talked you out of magic-controlled suicide,” he says. “I think I’m good on the freaking out factor.”

She doesn’t look convinced. Still, she takes a deep breath and says, “When I got to Deaton, he was surrounded by a ring of mountain ash.”

Though he expects her to elaborate, she doesn’t. “So?” he says eventually.

“So I almost broke through it.”

It takes him a second to process this. “I thought that was impossible.”

With a single shoulder shrug, she says, “So did I.”

“ _Peter_ couldn’t cross mountain ash.” Stiles isn’t sure if this counts as good news or bad news how. “How did you—”

But she just shakes her head. “I don’t know. And that’s not it.”

He stares at her blankly. “How’s that not it?”

After a moment of gnawing on her bottom lip, Scout answers, “Deaton said my eyes turned red. Alpha red. And—”

“ _What?_ ”

“—I was hallucinating red eyes in the motel.”

Fuck. This is so not happening. Werewolves, he can take. Alpha packs of werewolves, he can handle. Darach serial killers, he can figure out a solution for same as a Kanima controlled by a homicidal teenager. But this— _this_ —is so much worse than any of that. Because he can read Scout pretty well, but she’s got up every emotional wall she has right now, and he can’t tell if this is just a statement because she’s freaking out or a damn insinuation.

Last time she said something like this her dad was around. They don’t talk about that.

“He was suffering from oxygen deprivation, Scout,” Stiles says, though it sounds lame even to him. “Probably just hallucinated too. Wanted the best possible hero and all that. Don’t know how you almost broke through the mountain ash, though.”

Another shrug. She looks absolutely wrecked. “My body’s sore because of it.”

“Then you’re staying the night,” he tells her. “Come on, to the bathroom. You’ve got a spare toothbrush with your name on it.”

When she follows him, she’s silent, which stopped creeping him out months ago. Together they brush their teeth, and she’s got spare pajamas here which are actually just his old clothes, and tomorrow morning she’ll shower with some of _her_ shampoo and conditioner and use her deodorant and wear one of his shirts and her jeans from today. All this is here because he’s got the same type of thing back at her house, and half the laundry Melissa does consists of his clothes, because they’ve done more than infiltrated the other one’s life. They’ve _ingrained_ themselves into each other and ages ago their parents stopped caring.

Stiles doesn’t know why this epiphany hits him so damn hard at eleven thirty at night on a Wednesday as he brushes his teeth next to her, but it does. She rinses out her mouth and spits before smiling up at him, hair a mess and eyes brown.

For not the first time in the past few months, he has a very strong desire to lean down and kiss the sadness away.

 

 

When Allison doesn’t show up for school, Scout’s usual nerves kick in and she calls her up.

“ _I’m fine_ ,” her friend answers (Scout’s finally gotten past referring to her as ex-girlfriend in her head). “ _I just need to figure out if my dad is up to something._ ”

She can’t miss a day of a school and besides, she needs to keep an eye on Stiles’ dad. Not only is he the sheriff, but he also happens to be a better father to her than her own ever was and she’s not letting him die. No way. “Be careful,” she says almost uselessly. “I can send by Isaac if you want.”

“ _Scout, I think I can take care of myself._ ”

“I know, I know, but—”

The warning bell rings. “ _You’re going to be busy after school_.” Allison says like it’s a fact. “ _I’ll call up Lydia to come over if it makes you feel better. Now get to class before Ms. Blake kills you._ ”

Allison hangs up on her before she can say goodbye, but Scout doesn’t have time to care. If she’s late again, Ms. Blake probably _will_ kill her, and she’s so not ready to deal with that.

 

 

Even though Stiles isn’t typically afraid of his best friend, she definitely has her moments.

“I’m going to give you the same warning as I gave her,” she says, grabbing Aiden’s arm hard enough that she twists it behind his back, “and I don’t care that unlike her you’re an Alpha. Touch anyone on school grounds and I won’t leave marks on your back the fun way. Now leave before you break any agreements.”

She drops Aiden’s arm and he drops whatever the metal thing is that he’s holding, breathing hard. When Ethan pulls him out of the locker room, he’s got this look on his face that Stiles can’t quite identify, and everyone left seems terrified.

Maybe Deaton wasn’t just suffering from oxygen deprivation when he said her eyes turned red. Stiles isn’t a werewolf, which means he can’t fully _get_ the dynamics, but he at least recognizes this. Because just then she really did look like an Alpha, and that’s kind of scary.

 

 

_You’re already playing his game._

She leaves the guidance office with the words spinning in her head. Half an hour ago she basically threatened to rip Aiden’s face off. She did the same thing with Cora, same reason for both, and when she really thinks about it, could she do it? If it meant saying her friends. Or her mother. Or Stiles’ father. And especially Stiles himself, if she really wants to admit it.

As much as she likes Derek, _he’s_ already killed someone. His psychotic uncle, sure, but he still killed him. The only question now is could she do it too?

When she tells herself she couldn’t, it feels like a lie.

 

 

Lydia is tied to a chair with Scout unconscious on the ground when Stiles breaks in and his dad and Ms. Blake disappear. He does this thing where he runs over to the broken window, stares like he isn’t actually seeing it, then runs back to help up Scout and to go untie her.

“I heard you scream,” the other girl tells her, snapping the thing around her neck. “Thanks for being so loud.”

Ms. Blake called her a banshee. Even though Lydia knows bits and pieces of the legends, she is so spending the entire night looking up what this thing is. “Yeah, well, I knew the resident princess in shining armor would come running,” she answers and stands, rubbing her neck. “She’s using a fake face…her real one is cut up and white. No hair. Even her _clothes_ are different.”

“And now she has my dad.” Stiles’ voice is dull. Lydia doesn’t know what she’d do if her mom was kidnapped.

Before saying anything about that, Scout looks to her. “You should go home. Allison, Isaac, and her dad are here—find them, though I don’t think she’ll bother anyone for a while.” Then she glances back at Stiles. “She’ll probably go to Derek’s. We should beat her there, get him on our side.”

He crosses his arms. “Like he’d believe her over us anyway.”

“Better safe than sorry.”

Banshee. At least now she has a label for herself, even though everyone always says labels are bad. She tells them to hurry up, and they’re already halfway out the door before she can finish. Maybe if she stops fighting it, they’ll actually be able to save someone.

 

 

Even though it’s embarrassing considering he had sex with her less than a week ago, Derek can hear Scout and Stiles’ heartbeats clear enough to know they aren’t lying. And he might not have much love for Lydia, but tying her to a chair and strangling her is just cold. “You think she’ll be coming here?” he says because it’s probably true, but there’s a storm raging outside and he’s got enough to worry about with Cora. “Well, then I guess we’ll need a trap.”

Stiles pulls a bottle from his backpack. “Mistletoe,” he says. “No one supernatural seems to have much of a hard-on for it.”

“And like we said, she’s got his dad,” Scout adds. “She’s probably the one doing whatever’s happening to your sister. If she comes here maybe we’ve got a shot.”

“Did you even manage to do _anything?_ ”

“Um.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

With a scowl, Scout says, “You’re an Alpha. You’re better than me anyway. Maybe the two of us together have a chance.”

Lately he hasn’t been living up to Alpha standards much, if he let his little sister get sick like that and the others were strong enough to force him to impale one of his own on his claws. But maybe together they’ve got a chance.

This probably counts as wishful thinking.

 

 

“Ethan, Aiden, you don’t know what you’re doing!”

“All we want is her.”

Their voices mingle like this, and personally Scout thinks it’s really fucked up, but now is not the time to think about. “Yeah, and you can have her,” she says, “but she’s got Stiles’ dad, so we kind of need her alive right now.”

When they drop her, she thinks for a moment she convinced them, but all they do is charge towards the elevator. It shuts before they make it, and Scout decides right now is a better time to run than fight.

Even so, hitting them in the face with a light a few minutes later makes her feel a lot better about the whole situation.

 

 

Slapping Derek awake feels like kind of a dick move, but he’s desperate, so he does it. He’s stopped, though, before he can actually punch him. “She went with him,” Stiles says, sitting back on his heels as his friend sits up. “Jennifer took Melissa so she went with him.”

“ _What?_ Why?”

Stiles shakes his head because he doesn’t get it either. “You don’t understand,” he answers. “I had my arm literally around her waist and she just walked right out towards him. I came to get you as soon as I could.”

As Derek stands, so does he. “Where’s Cora?”

“Peter and Isaac have her. They’re probably with the Argents by now,” Stiles says. “Get out of here and help them. Find Scout.”

“What’re you going to do?”

Good fucking question. “Hold off the police,” he says because he’s human and doesn’t even have a bat and his best friend just walked away. He hasn’t felt this useless in years. “They’ll be coming and if they find a trail, they’ll follow it.”

Derek puts his hand on his shoulder and says, “We’ll find her,” and Stiles doesn’t bother telling him not to give promises he can’t keep.

 

 

When Rafael was called back into Beacon Hill to investigate Sheriff Stilinski, he planned on seeing Melissa first, not handling a case in what’s practically a damn monsoon right away. He also wasn’t banking on the first witness he’d have to interview to be his daughter’s only friend—or who once was her only friend. From the number of times Scout turns up in witness reports in this town along with Stiles, a couple of girls named Lydia Martin and Allison Argent, and more recently a boy named Isaac Lahey, he’s guessing she fell into the wrong crowd and expanded her group. With a friend like Stiles, he’s not surprised. Disappointed, sure, but still not surprised.

The kid seems about as pleased to see him as he expected he would. “A Stilinski at the center of this whole mess,” Rafael says, and thinks about how the sheriff won’t be sheriff for long. “What a shocker. Think you can answer a few questions without the usual level of sarcasm?”

Stiles’ mouth twitches, but he doesn’t quite scowl. “If you can ask the questions without the usual level of stupid.”

Last time they saw each other hadn’t been on good terms. The kid misinterpreted the situation and Scout crying hadn’t helped. “Where’s your dad and why’s no one been able to contact him?” he asks.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen him in hours.”

“Is he drinking again?”

Right away he can see he hit a nerve; Stiles’ body tenses and he sighs. “What do you mean, again?” he says. “He never had to stop.”

“But he did have to slow down. Is he drinking like he used to?” Eight-year-olds don’t notice everything, he reminds himself.

Stiles, of course, isn’t amused. “Okay, how about this?” he says. “Next time I see him I’ll give him a field sobriety test. We can do the alphabet—start with f, end with u.”

Still thinks he’s as clever as he always did. Rafael wonders where Scout is, because it used to be that you couldn’t find one without the other. Witness reports from past cases indicate that hasn’t changed. “How about you just tell me what the hell happened here?”

“I don’t know what happened here,” he answers. “I was stuck in an elevator the whole time.”

“You’re not the one who put the name on the doors, are you?”

“What names?”

The look on his face says he isn’t lying, which means Rafael can’t nail him for anything and has to let him go. Goddamn Stilinskis.

 

 

Lydia kisses Stiles, and it feels wrong because it’s not supposed to be her.

“How’d you do that?” he says, staring at her wide-eyed and the light from the window catches the side of his face.

She scrambles for words when she answers, “I, uh, read somewhere that holding your breath can stop a panic attack, so, when I kissed you—” Outside the warning bell rings. “—you held your breath.”

“I did?”

“Yeah, you did.”

“Thanks,” he says. “That was really smart.”

By now they’ve probably got thirty seconds left before class and for once Lydia doesn’t care. “You really love her, don’t you?”

When he smiles, it’s small and self-deprecating and she hates it. “That obvious, huh?” he says. “Guess I got issues.”

“Well, then if I were really smart I’d tell you to sign up for a few sessions with the guidance counselor.”

He goes to say something else, but pauses, and another piece of the puzzle clicks into place.

 

 

Just because she’s temporarily assisting the Alpha pack doesn’t mean she’s actually _part_ of the Alpha pack, and she very recklessly throws herself in front of her school guidance counselor who apparently is a lot more than doubling as a French teacher at most. “I’m not going to let them kill you,” she promises, “but if you know something, please, please, tell me.”

There’s blood dripping onto her palm. “The Nemeton,” Mrs. Morell answers. “Find that, and you’ll find your mother and Stiles’ father. You’ll find Jennifer. _Find_ the Nemeton.”

She says it like that’s easy.

 

 

Before the ice bathes, when everyone else is getting them ready and the three of them are basically given time to emotionally prepare themselves, Stiles drops down next to Scout.

“Are you okay going through with this?” he asks, and fingers at the edges of the badge.

She has a feeling she knows why he’s asking, but she says, “Why wouldn’t I be?” anyway. It comes out more biting than she meant to.

Without looking at her, he answers, “You do realize how risky this is, right? We could die. From the way Deaton’s making it sound, Scout, we can only get pulled out if we, well, _want_ to be pulled out.”

 _If we’re going to do this, then you’re just going to have to take me with you_.

Scout doesn’t want to talk about this, not right now. “She’s long gone from my head, Stiles,” she tells him. “I’m fine.”

It kind of pisses her off, really, that he doesn’t seem to believe her.

           

 

Lydia goes with Stiles, probably because they actually understand each other on some level, Deaton goes with Scout because he’s her emissary, technically, and Isaac with Allison because he found it in his heart to forgive her or whatever. Honestly, considering he’s stuck in a tub of ice surrounded by his “clique,” two of which are about to die with him, and their own personal Obi Wan, he doesn’t care so much about the reasoning to anything.

At least Scout doesn’t seem scared, he thinks, watching her while she sits in the tub shivering and her lips are already draining of color and she’s looking smaller than usual. It really hits him now, that they’re going to die even if it only ends up being temporary, and he almost tells her. Lydia’s probably mentally screaming out him to.

But he chickens out last second and says instead, “By the way, if I don’t get back and you do, you should probably know something. Your dad’s in town.”

Scout doesn’t answer, just seems kind of horrified, and he wants to reaches his hand out to grab her for maybe one last time.

He doesn’t get the chance.

 

 

Death isn’t cold, which takes Scout by surprise. Instead it’s warm like a day in late October on the night before spring break, like the day she stopped being some shaggy haired little girl with asthma and found a dead body in the wounds. That old version of her is there, too, wearing a shirt from Target and Stiles’ hoodie and shoes slightly too big that Mom bought years ago when she thought her feet would grow because this is before Lydia got her hands on her.

She watches as this old version of her looks for her now obsolete inhaler and drops her phone in shock when she finds Laura Hale’s body. Scout goes running after herself, odd as that is, and tries not to think about how if she found that corpse now she wouldn’t even pause in surprise. Like that quote she learned in world history, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Somewhere out there are Stiles and Allison and she’s here, running, when she stumbles across the Nemeton just existing here innocently, right in the middle of the woods where it all began on that first night.

That’s when she wakes up, pulls herself out of the water, and the others are here, too.

 

 

When Stiles told her that her father was back in town, Scout wasn’t expecting to see him so soon. Or like this, invading one his best friend’s homes like it’s his right to even though it makes sense for the Argents to legally own all those guns.

He smiles, addresses Allison first with, “Quite the arsenal you’ve got here,” before standing and looking at her. “Scout.”

It takes a shocking amount of restraint not to just grab Allison and Isaac and run, track down their parents without Mr. Argent’s scent to follow, too, and leave her own father to wonder what’s going on by himself, but she decides she can take five minutes to get him off her back. If she plays her cards right, maybe she can even do it without ripping his face off. “What’re you doing here?” she asks, and her voice sounds smaller and less harsh than she wanted it to.

“Following one of the few leads I have,” he answers, like he even has answers. “Now, since I don’t know where you’ve been, how about you have a seat and we can talk? You too Isaac!”

Even though they dated, Scout never really told Allison what happened with her dad, but she got it in bits and pieces, and Isaac’s probably figured it out, so apparently it doesn’t matter that she can most likely take down everyone in this room if she had to, because they box themselves around her. Odds are her father notices, too. Isaac asks, “How do you know my name?”

Her father’s tapping his foot. Even if she couldn’t hear it, she’d know that. “Your name is one of the few things I do know,” he says. “To be honest what’s going on here has me stumbling in the dark, even over the smallest clue.”

“If you’re trying to tell me you don’t have a clue,” Scout says, stepping past Allison because she can take care of herself, “I learned that a long time ago.” She doesn’t care that he’s surrounded by his coworkers—subordinates—and dealing with a pissed off kid will only get awkward. Good. Let it happen. If she’s going to die soon after seeing him like this, she’d rather die knowing she made him miserable instead of smug.

He must realize how awkward a fight would be too, because he says, “I’m really hoping to avoid the embarrassment of dragging my daughter into an interrogation room. Really hoping.”

On a normal occasion, she might force him into doing it _just_ for that reason, but she doesn’t have _time for this._ She glances behind her and Isaac and Allison look to her for an answer, so she gives a slight nod to let them know they have to do this. “Only because you asked so nicely,” she says, and sits heavily down into the chair on the furthest left, crossing her legs and her arms. “So, why are you here? Do you really need Allison’s father, or were you just trying to get me?”

His grip on the back of the chair he’s standing behind tightens. “I’m not going to lie,” he says, “I’m more than a little disturbed not only by the number of missing parents but the fact that it’s Stiles father, your father, and your mother.”

“So it is for me, then.”

Isaac raises his hand. “Mine are both dead,” he says, not diffusing the tension, but at least keeping her from exploding, and pops a mint in his mouth.

“Save your cliché teenage apathy for your high school teachers,” her father shoots back. “The three of you know more than you’re saying and I’m fully willing to keep you here all night if I have to.”

She catches sight of the arrow heads the Argents used to blind her on the corner of the table before glancing at Allison who’s surveying the whole pile, which means she’s coming up with a plan hopefully, and says, “You can’t keep us here.”

Sometimes Deucalion isn’t blind. It’s just that he sees through the eyes of a wolf.

Allison adds, “Not without some sort of warrant.”

“I’ve got a desk full of probable cause.”

This gets her pissed, which Scout expected, and she and Isaac are already preparing to run by the time Allison pulls the smoke bomb. Her father shouts her name, but she’s out the door and wouldn’t look back even if she had the chance.

 

 

The moment the eclipse starts and they all lose their power, Derek shoves Scout roughly behind him. Without the perks of being a werewolf, that five foot, skinny as twig body with bad lungs actually means lot and he might not be good like this either, but he’s bigger and that has to count for something.

But the other two in the barn go for each other, not for them. “Jennifer!” he says to get her to stop bashing Deucalion against the ground. “He doesn’t know!”

“Know what?” Her voice is harsh like this, double toned, and he really hopes Scout doesn’t do anything stupid.

“What you really look like.” There’s a puddle of blood under Deucalion’s head. This better work. “He knows the cost of bringing Kali into his pack, but he never saw the price you paid.”

For the first time in what feels like, well, years, he gets hit by a bit of luck, because it _does_ work and suddenly she’s leaning down, healing Deucalion’s eyes. He screams the whole way through. “Turn to me,” she says—shouts, Derek can’t really tell, “turn to me!”

Deucalion does, and she changes back into Jennifer (did he seriously have sex with this woman?), goes to attack and Derek catches her before she falls. “Healing him made you weak,” he says, “just like healing Cora did to me. You won’t have strength for at least a few minutes.”

Off to the side, Scout just looks kind of confused, but that makes sense because half the time she really only seems to understand either her own plans or Stiles’ at best. “Then you do it,” Jennifer tells him. “Kill him.”

“No.”

“What?”

“Like my mother used to say,” he answers, slipping his arm around her neck and slowly tightening the grip, “I’m a predator, but I don’t have to be a killer. Now let them go.”

When she starts to attack him, Scout jumps her, but she lands on her back so fast it’s ridiculous, and Derek lets himself be used as a distraction again until her fifteen minutes are up. He isn’t banking on her using a mountain ash ring to defend herself, and he definitely isn’t banking on Scout breaking past it without shifting anything other than her eyes.

“I’m an Alpha now,” she says, and the color is a bright, bright red.

 

 

Their parents are saved, Dad knows, Jennifer Blake is dead as a doornail, and Scout’s an Alpha now. Stiles decides that if he’s going to live with a darkness around the heart for the rest of his life, he might well take a shot at something he’s been dancing around for the past few months.

He pulls himself through her bedroom window in broad daylight because apparently Melissa and Isaac are having a discussion about how no, he doesn’t have to pay rent _again_ , so using the front door is out of the question. “So which part of yesterday is this about?” she asks, getting out of her desk chair to stand in front of him. “The turning into Alpha, the mountain ash, or about how you think it’s a bad idea I left Deucalion alive?”

“It’s not about any of that,” he says, though he actually means at least not right now because he’s pretty sure she and Derek suffered a moment of insanity by letting that crazy bastard go, but still. “Look, this isn’t—this is less about talking, and more about me _telling_ you something.”

She goes from vaguely amused from apprehensive in a second flat. “What’s wrong?”

After a moment of trying to find the words, he gives up. “Can I just show you instead?”

“Uh, sure?”

It’s a little awkward because he came here without a plan other than “fix this” and now all the sudden she’s looking up at him and he’s leaning down and he can see right when she gets with the program, which is definitely a good thing, and he’s not just kissing her, she’s kissing back too and—

There’s a knock on the door.

They pull back, and her lips are wet and until she blinks, her eyes are red too, which was actually really kind of hot.  He’s still got one hand buried in her hair. “It’s my dad,” she whispers, horrified and when she blinks again, they’re back to brown. “What should we do it? Ignore it?”

Another knock. “Melissa let me in, Scout,” says her dad, voice muffled through the door. “I know you’re in there.”

“Did you kiss me because you still don’t want to be a virgin,” she asks, still whispering, “or because you want to date me?”

“Scout, we need to talk.”

They ignore him. “Well, if you were kissing back for the latter reason,” Stiles answers, whispering too, “I think we can actually skip to the whole boyfriend-girlfriend part by this point. We’ve already been sleep in the same bed for years.”

Right as Mr. McCall knocks again, she says, “Yeah, absolutely,” and sighs. “Hold on.”

She walks over to the door and pulls it open, revealing the dick himself in all his shining, brown-suited glory. “Scout, we should—” he starts, but she shuts it in her face, turning back to Stiles with a smile.

“Where were we?”

Yeah, he can definitely live with a little darkness around his heart if he has Scout there by this side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next part's shaping up to be seriously long and I don't know why.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regression to the mean doesn't seem possible when the world's keeping you firmly at your lowest point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I don't really ship Allison and Isaac because my OTP is Scott and Allison, but I was going to write it because it's canon. Then I realized I established that she's a lesbian in chapter one instead of bisexual like Scout so, uh, surprise ship! It's not in your face or anything. I mostly needed it for the ending.

Stiles wakes up to Scout sitting on his stomach, holding his arms down on either side. “It’s okay,” she says when he sits up and she slides down to his lap, “I get them too.”

When he wraps his arms around her, she feels so impossibly small in his arms, like the girl who couldn’t breathe if she ran half a mile without an inhaler, not the girl who became an Alpha werewolf without trying. “Your eyes are still red,” he tells her, because they were when they went to bed, but the past few days she hasn’t had much luck controlling that.

“I know. They better stop that by morning,” she says. “What were you dreaming about?”

He shakes his head. “Something about the Nemeton and open doors,” he answer, and doesn’t say that he can’t tell if he’s dreaming or awake. Instead he kisses her forehead and says, “Get some sleep. I know I didn’t just wake you up.”

With a sigh, she rolls off him, and curls up on her side. He stays awake, watches out for nightmares, and wakes her up before she can scream, too.

 

 

“Melissa!”’

Really, this is not how Isaac expected to spend six in the morning on a school day, but he woke up to the smell of blood. Scout’s covered in it, same as her sheets, and it’s her own, but the cuts are already gone. Melissa runs in a moment after he calls, already in her work scrubs, and her face pales. “Oh, honey,” she says, dropping to the ground in front of them, “what did you do?”

Scout blinks and looks from her ruined sheets to her torn up, bloody Stiles shirt. It looks like the aftermath of a murder. “I had a dream I was fighting,” she answers. “I guess I went after myself.”

Now, Isaac’s no stranger to nightmares. How can he be after living with his dad? But he’s never done anything like this to himself before. “Is this because of the sacrifice thing?” he asks, and glances at Melissa, who’s gotten up to get her daughter clothes.

Instead of answering, Scout stretches out her arms. “My shadow looks like a wolf.”

He does a quick sweep of the floor, but no, her shadow looks normal as ever. “This is the effect Deaton was telling you about,” he says. “Scout, there’s nothing there. Get up so you can shower.”

“You don’t have to go to school today,” Melissa says. “Take a day or two if you need it.”

Shaking her head, Scout says, “I want to see if Allison and Stiles are okay.”

Being a werewolf already is a sort of darkness of its own, so if she’s this bad, they’re probably worse. “Then I’m driving,” he tells her, and she doesn’t argue.

 

 

“Until she’s got a handle on this, I’m giving _you_ the car keys,” Melissa says, and hands them over. “Is that okay?”

He stares down at them, not surprised. “Yeah.”

Then she hugs him, which is a surprise, and he can practically feel how afraid she is.

 

 

Isaac must’ve told Stiles what she said about her shadow because the moment it starts morphing into a wolf again and she starts staring, he reaches under his desk from where he sits behind her and takes her hand. “Eyes,” he says under his breath as the teacher uncomfortably introduces his daughter and Scout twists so she’s only looking at him. “You’re good. Your shadow’s good, your eyes are good. You’re good.”

Ever since they’ve started hallucinating and getting nightmares and she’s began losing control of what her eyes do, everyone around her as started using what they called an Eye Check to make sure everything’s normal. For him they count her fingers, or his fingers if she isn’t around, because you have more of those in dreams but you also can’t read in dreams and he suddenly can’t read all the time here—like right now, if the fact that his book isn’t open is any indication. Allison keeps seeing her dead aunt and her hand won’t stop shaking.

Basically, every single one of them is a fucking wreck. If it gets so bad she starts losing control of her body, too, she has to rip herself open with her claws to stop it.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” she lies, because he can’t hear her heartbeat. “Thanks.”

She turns back around to face the teacher, but keeps her arm twisted behind her. In the front of the room, Danny passes Greenberg money from the bet of how long it would take for Stiles and Scout to hook up and the lesson continues like normal. Everyone else in the room acts like everything is okay because they don’t know any better.

 

 

“So you and Stiles are finally together?”

Scout nods and looks uncomfortable, which she shouldn’t. “Is that okay?” she asks, and Allison really wishes she didn’t.

“You’re my ex, not my current girlfriend look for a three-way without asking me,” she answers. “I’m happy for you.”

And she means it, too. She knew they’d get together eventually, like everyone else in the school. People say their names like ScoutandStiles is one word. A part of her will always love Scout and she thinks a part of Scout will probably always love her, but she’s seventeen and one of the last things Mom told her was that people can fall in love more than once. “Do you have your eye on anyone?” her friend asks, and picks at her nails.

Allison shrugs. “There’s a cute girl in my English class. She’s new,” she says. “I don’t even know her name, but she’s hot. I think I have a type.”

“Which is?”

“Short girls.”

When Scout laughs, Allison relaxes. They haven’t been laughing lately, same as Stiles. “Is she Asian by any chance?” the other girl adds.

Surprised, she answers, “Yeah, she is. Do you know her?”

Unfortunately, Scout just shakes her head. “All I know is that her name is Kira. Her dad introduced her. He teaches our history course.”

“Oh god, that’s so embarrassing!”

“I know, right?”

They’re in gym class now, running the half mile as warm up. The last few stragglers finish the final lap and the teacher blows the whistle, signaling it’s time to shut up and go back inside.

 

 

In her last school, Kira was the type of girl to walk up to random people and make friends all the time, but everyone here is so standoffish. So honestly, she feels like she deserves a metal for sliding up to the table with the five people who are all so good looking they have to be the popular ones, just to say, “Hi, sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing what you guys are talking about and I think I might actually know…what you’re talking about.”

Awesome intro, Kira, she thinks, and wants another desk to bang her head against. Three of the five people look slightly confused; the short brunette raises and eyebrow at the tall brunette who averts her eyes. Weird reaction, yeah, but it’s still not a _bad_ reaction, so she continues, “There’s a Tibetan word for it. It’s called Bardo. It literally means ‘in between state.’ The state between life and death.”

“And what do they call you?” says the redhead after a moment of seriously awkward silence. Kira’s pretty sure her name is Lydia Martin and that she’s Beacon Hill’s highest member of the popularity hierarchy.

Before she can answer, the tall brunette that she’s now pretty sure is actually in English with her says, “Kira.” And when everyone looks at her she adds, “What? We have class together.”

Lydia Martin rolls her eyes before turning back to Kira. “Are you talking Bardo as in Tibetan Buddhism or Indian?”

Oh thank god. Someone else who knows and won’t think she sounds like a raving lunatic when she explains. She takes a seat next to the boy with the puffy hair who’s holding hands with the short brunette under the table. “Either, I guess,” she answers, “but all the stuff you guys were saying—all that happens in Bardo. There are different progressive stages, some where you have hallucinations; some you see, some you just hear. And you can be visited by peaceful or wrathful deities.”

“ _Wrathful_ deities?” says the taller boy with the flat curly hair. “And what are those?”

Okay, so maybe it’s a little inappropriate that she smiles when she says, “You know, like demons,” but she thinks this subject is really cool, so how can she not?

“Demons,” says the puffy haired boy. “Why not?”

“Hold on,” cuts in the girl who introduced her. “If there are different progressive states, then what’s the last one?”

“Death,” she says. “You die.”

The boy with the curly hair and Lydia look at the other three like they’re already planning funerals.

 

 

Though she doesn’t tell Stiles she’s doing it, she calls up her father to come over the moment she gets home. “Why are you here?” she asks, crossing her arms. “No one wants you here. Not me, not Mom. Definitely no one down at the station.”

“I’m trying to help.”

She balls her fists up at her side. Even though Isaac probably knew something was up, she kicked him out for the night, asked him to check up on Allison and make sure she’s all right because no one needs to hear this. “That doesn’t make any sense,” she snaps. “Who are you helping? Get out. I can’t believe you’d do that to my best friend!”

That little voice in the back of her head says, Just because you separate your conjugations doesn’t make your argument any more valid.

When her dad does the count to three to lower his anger thing, she can actually _hear_ it from his heartbeat. “I’m not doing anything to your _boyfriend_ ,” he answers, stressing the word she was trying to hide from him. “I’m just doing my job.”

Mom enters the room.

“Your job sucks!”

Count to three, press his lips together. “Sometimes I can’t argue that,” and it’s a lie.

Looking back and forth between the two of them, Mom says, “Okay, can someone tell me what’s going on?”

“He’s trying to get _my boyfriend’s_ dad fired,” she says before turning and adding, “Which, by the way, is something you shouldn’t know about.”

“It’s the talk of the damn police department that someone saw the two of you together,” he says before looking Mom. “Look, I’m not trying to get anyone fired. It’s not true.”

Mom goes on instant defensive too. “What’re you doing?”

“I’m conducting an investigation for impeachment.”

“Sounds a lot like getting him fired.”

Maybe Scout shouldn’t have bitten her nails because they’re not biting her skin down deep enough to make a difference without her claws. “That’s not it,” her dad says. “It’s the lack of resolution and inability to close cases that’s going to get him fired. My job is just going to collect the information. And it’s the job my superiors have given me.”

Mom’s eyes are back on Scout, who’s taking deep breathes trying to calm herself down. Think of Stiles, she tells herself. Think of Stiles and Allison and Lydia and Isaac and Derek. But the little voice in the back of her head reminds her that her control’s been slipping and her dad’s around, so Mom can’t pull off an Eye Check. Still, she says, “Your job sucks,” and on normal occasions that would be enough.

No, not normal. _Past_ occasions.

Then her claws are growing and breathing gets hard and Mom is there, taking her hand and telling her to calm down. She leads her outside, away from the very confused should-be stranger standing in their living room, and over to the hallway. “You told me once that you and Stiles found a way to control this,” she says, and Scout slides down the wall, pulling her legs to her chest and her face to her knees so Mom won’t have to see her shift or hurt herself to stop it. “You have to find an anchor, right?”

Once it was Allison, but he was the one to talk her down that time in the gym, hold her hand and not let her go. “I need Stiles,” she says, though the words come out strained. “I can’t get back control without Stiles.”

Mom comes down next to him and her hand settles on her upper back. “He’s too far away, sweetheart, and he can’t always be here,” she says gently. “Scout, you need to be your own anchor. You can do it.”

The little voice says she can’t, but she screams over it with the sound of people cheering in lacrosse, of Lydia telling her pastels aren’t her color and maybe she should try this blue, Allison’s fingers brushing over stitches, Isaac defending that ridiculous scarf, finding out Derek isn’t dead, waking up after a nightmare of burning alive with Stiles wrapped around her even though he’s dreaming too. She’s not her own anchor, not even close, but her claws retract and she has to assume the red fades. When she looks up, Mom does an Eye Check and says, “They’re brown again. You did it.”

“Yeah,” Scout answers as Mom rubs her back. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

 

 

Scout shows up through his actual bedroom door at midnight instead of through his window, flashlight in hand a look of determination on her face. It kind of freaks him out.

“What’s going on?” he asks immediately, sitting up.

She sets her mouth in a hard line. “You and me, we’re heading out,” she answers. “We’re going to find a body. A dead body.”

And that’s good enough for him.

 

 

In the woods, they hold hands and before this started up, Stiles never thought of himself as an affectionate kind of guy. Turns out he is, though, because it seems like he can’t stop touching her. At least she doesn’t seem to have any complaints, she figures.

They break apart when they find the car. “Now that’s creepy,” he says once he’s holding the talking baby doll. “You ever have one of these as a kid?”

Shaking her head, she says, “Nah, I’ve always been more into sports. It’s not like you’re the one who suddenly made me grow out of having girly habits or anything.”

She’d never directly said that before, but it was always something he suspected; sports were a good excuse to get out of the house, after all. Isaac would probably agree. Thinking about that kind of wants Stiles to drop this whole thing now and drive her home to somewhere she’ll never have to deal with her dad again, even if he _doesn’t_ seem like he’s drunk all the time anymore. “Well, you’re a chick. You’ve got to at least know what this is.”

As expected, she rolls her eyes. “You’re hope—” she starts to say, but cuts herself off. “Please tell me you see that.”

He searches for whatever she’s talking about out, prepares to say no and give her another Eye Check, but then he catching the two pinpricks of glowing yellow. “Yeah,” he says, “not just you.”

“Wait here.”

She takes off running, leaving him with the flashlight alone by the car for a full fifteen minutes. When she gets back, her eyes are red. “I found her, and she’s a full coyote,” she tells him. “Your dad is so not going to be happy. I don’t even know if he’ll believe us.”

He’ll give her the heads up about her eyes in a bit, when it gets to a point where it’s necessary, he decides, because he doesn’t want to freak her out. Instead her stretches out his hand and she accepts it immediately, slipping her fingers between his. She says there’s nothing else they can do about it tonight.

Though he doesn’t want admit it, he’s relieved.

 

 

When humans scream, it means they’re distressed—scared, in pain. When a werewolf screams, it comes out at least partially as a howl, and Scout jolts awake to wounds still healing on her stomach and surrounded by teenage boys. Mom’s reluctantly working the night shift again, so she’s not here.

As she scrambles to cover herself, Isaac says, “They heard you from across town,” because Ethan and Aiden are there too and after ripping up three sets of pajamas, she’s gotten into sleeping in a sports bra and shorts despite the weather. Besides Stiles, there are only two guys she wouldn’t mind seeing her like this: Isaac, because he lives with her, and Derek, because he’s already seen her wrapped in a towel twice.

But the twins aren’t part of her pack for a reason. They aren’t supposed to care. “I’m fine,” she says quickly before they can do anything, even though the room smells like blood. “Seriously, I’m fine.”

The twins share a Look. “We thought you were getting tortured,” Ethan says bluntly, and Aiden adds, “Or dying.”

Unlike Stiles, she doesn’t need to scream herself awake, but pain is pain. “I’m fine,” she repeats, and looks to Isaac. “You know that I am.”

“She’s good,” he says because he _is_ part of her pack, which means he’s unfortunately protective to a fault. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but thanks for caring, I guess.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Sorry about—waking you up.”

She wants Stiles, but considering her habit of ripping herself open in her sleep because she thinks she’s losing control and killing all her friends (it’s not like you can’t do it, points out that little voice in the back of her head that she’s starting to getting the feeling isn’t supposed to be there), it doesn’t seem like a good idea. Still looking skeptical, Aiden says, “It was a nightmare, wasn’t it? Because of what Kali’s old emissary did.”

Technically, Jennifer didn’t _do_ anything, just acted as the spark for it, and they don’t need to know anyway, so she shrugs. “I guess you could say it hasn’t been the easiest month in the world, yeah,” she answers, and pulls up the blanket again when it starts to slip. “Anyway, while I appreciate your concern, you should probably go get some sleep. I need to do the laundry before my mom gets back, too.”

Though it’s definitely an awkward situation because they all still hate each other, Isaac leads Ethan and Aiden out the front door (they got in through the window, which she always leaves cracked open for Stiles), and she slips out the bed to start cleaning up. Her shorts aren’t torn, but they’re bloody too, so she needs to change those and it takes almost a full thing of stain remover to get everything before putting it in the wash. “You’ll have to talk about it eventually, Scout,” Isaac says as she turns the dial to start it off. “I mean, that was loud enough that the twins showed up. It’s getting worse.”

“I’m more a fan of ignoring a problem until it goes away,” she says, quoting Stiles because it’s a good working philosophy and hopping up to sit on the sink. “I’m surprised they came.”

“I’m not. You didn’t hear yourself. It doesn’t take being in your pack to answer something like that.”

“Isaac, I find it creepy that I can even _have_ a pack.” And she does, really, because this isn’t her. She’s not a leader. Someone like Allison is, or Stiles, or Lydia—someone smart. Grades over the years show that she’s kind of an idiot. “Look, go back to bed. I’m going for a run.”

 _A run_ translates to _I’m going too to find Stiles so we can hunt down a missing girl again_ , but she’s too lazy to explain it. Though he looks doubtful, Isaac agrees, and Scout promises to be back by morning.

 

 

They wait for Dad sitting on a rock outside Malia’s hole-up. “The call went to voicemail, so I know his number isn’t disconnected,” Scout says, looking down at her phone again. “I should’ve gotten Cora’s when I got the chance.”

“Cora was a complete bitch to you, do you really think she would’ve given it?” Stiles points out and she just sighs. “Okay, if Derek made her she might’ve.”

Back when things were simple, they spent a lot of time throwing Derek under the bus. Stiles might like the guy now, but he almost wishes he could turn back time to that call a do over to figure out where they went wrong. Getting Scout bit by a werewolf probably wasn’t the _exact_ point everything went to hell, but there had to be a moment afterwards.

Though she doesn’t sound particularly convinced, she says, “I bet he’s fine. Maybe they’re out of the country right now and can’t get international calls.”

Now they’ve got a missing werecoyote, a missing friend, and her dad’s doing an _investigation_ of impeachment for his dad. That, and the two of them and Allison are all going completely insane. The only good thing to come out of this is that she and Scout finally fulfilled everyone’s expectations and got together, but even that has it’s issues. Or one issue, anyway. Because she’s absolutely terrified to basically do, well, _anything_ that’ll cause an increased heartbeat and make her lose control. He thinks she can probably control it if she gave it a shot, go after Malia on her own, but all she said was, “Well, at least that makes one of us,” when he told her.

Yeah, what a happy group of friends they are right now.

“Why do you think she’s full coyote?” he says, leaning back. “Is it because she hasn’t been human in so long?”

With a shrug, Scout answers, “I don’t know. Maybe. Peter was pretty wolfy, remember? And Jackson went full on Kanima. Could be a personality thing.”

“Or it could be about giving into your animal side,” Stiles says because when he really thinks about it, werewolves are human and wolf combined, so there’s got to be some part in there that gives. “Maybe if you don’t bother changing back, after a while you keep getting more and more wolfy—or coyotey—until you’re an actual full, four legged, fluffy creature complete with the tail and ears. Sounds like a plot to a bad movie.”

“It probably is the plot to a bad movie.” That’s when she must hear the sirens. “Your dad just hit the road near the preserve. We need an excuse to be out here.”

He grins, and those aren’t face muscles he uses all that much anymore. “That’s simple,” he says. “I was taking my super awesome girlfriend out for a midnight stroll in the wood. Anyone we know would believe that.”

She laughs. “Stiles, I think it’s more like _me_ bringing _you_ out. You couldn’t pull off a midnight stroll if you tried.”

“Hey, just because you’re a wolf doesn’t mean you get a monopoly on nighttime.”

“I’ll give you daytime.”

“But that involves _school_.”

That bicker until the cops come about who gets custody of the different times of day, and Stiles pretends he doesn’t see the shadows taking shape out of the corner of his eye.

 

 

In English class, they’re allowed to sit wherever they want, and Kira drops down in the seat in front of her. “Hi, I’m Kira,” she says, “but you knew that. I knew you knew that. I don’t know why I just told you that again.” Besides being short, she’s like the complete opposite of Scout. Allison can see that basically immediately, considering her friend, while completely socially awkward, isn’t much for rambling and never has been. “Anyway,” Kira continues, “I have something for you.”

“For me?” Allison answers, confused and surprised and just a little bit pleased.

Kira slips her backpack off her shoulders and reaches in, saying, “Yeah, it’s about Bardo. My explanation was sort of all over the place, so I did some research and printed it out for you,” as she pulls out an entire stack of papers.

It actually thuds when it hits the desk. “Oh,” Allison says. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“It’s fine. It only took a couple of hours.”

“Then you _really_ didn’t have to do this.”

When Kira answers, Allison doesn’t hear it. Kate runs past the window, blood running down her neck and splashing across the glass. _You were supposed to be strong_ , it reads, and Allison’s so sick of this she doesn’t even want to cry anymore.

 

 

Panic attacks now come easy to all of them, but Stiles most of all, and Scout runs up to the front of the room when he starts to derail into one of them. She tells the teacher she should bring him to the nurse’s office, would probably do it even if he didn’t nod his head, and drags her boyfriend into an empty classroom across the hall.

He grabs onto the corner of a desk hard, looking down, so she grips him by the hair and pulls his head up so he’s looking her in the eye. “Count my fingers, Stiles,” she says, holding up the first one. “Come on, you know this. Count and breathe.”

“One.” His voice is strangled because he’s barely getting the air in and after years of asthma attacks and now nearly a month of suffering from anxiety attacks of her own, she knows the feeling. So she holds up the second. “Two.” Third, fourth, fifth. “Three, four, five.” It comes out slow, but it comes out, and he keeps his head up even when she releases his hair to start the next hand.

At ten, the hyperventilating slows until it stops, and he stumbles back the two steps it takes to hit the wall and slide down. She crouches down in front of him and he says, “What the hell is happening to me?” for not the first time because taking away his ability to read is just a dick move.

“We’ll figure it out,” she answers, though she’s starting to feel like a broken record and completely useless. What’s she supposed to do when she can’t even control herself? “You’re going to be okay.”

“Am I?” he says, and then looks level at her. “Are you? Scout, you can’t transform. Allison’s being haunted by her dead aunt, and I’m straight up losing my mind. We can’t do this, we can’t.” Even though it’s probably lying by omission, she hasn’t told him yet about her tendency to wake up in her own blood, and knows that means he and Allison are most likely keeping things quiet too. “We can’t help Malia, we can’t help anyone.”

His legs were parted when he fell, still are, and she slips between them, wrapping her arms around his neck. “We can try,” she says, and his arms circle around her, too. “We can always try.”

He doesn’t answer, and she doesn’t push him. Instead they stay this way until the bell rings, and she feels his heartbeat steady against his.

 

 

“Or worse, you turn into Peter.”

“Stop!”

If there’s anyone in this room besides Lydia who understands Peter getting inside her head, it’s Scout, but she’s surprised Stiles shouts it at the same time she does. The way Scout’s whole body tenses up and her eyes turn red makes it look nothing similar, but something about the feeling in the air is a bad reminder to that day in the motel.

Suddenly Lydia realizes _exactly_ what idea Jennifer put inside her friend’s head and why turning into an Alpha freaked her out so bad.

Stiles is there first, but she’s there pretty quick too all things considered, and Ethan and Aiden don’t look as confused as she thought they would. “No one’s going to burn you, Scout,” Stiles says, and her eyes are red. “Hey, are you hearing me?”

“No flares, or gasoline, or fire bombs,” Lydia adds. “Flammable object free.”

From behind them, Aiden says, “Watch for her claws. They aren’t a fun time.”

Glancing down, Lydia sees that her nails really have changed, but before she can step away or tell Stiles too, he grabs onto her hands like it’s nothing. “Remember that week when we were thirteen and our parents synced up vacation time so we could all go to the beach together for spring break?” he’s saying and Lydia feels like such an outsider it’s ridiculous. “We were right by the ocean, but Melissa and Dad wouldn’t let us go down alone, so we went to the pool and you wouldn’t share your fries earlier so I pushed you in as revenge, remember? But you were wearing that dress thing that goes over bathing suits still and I didn’t realize your phone was in there—your first phone—and you got soaked and the phone was ruined and the three of you were so pissed off. Deep end, too, eight feet or twelve, and your whole body was covered in water. You can’t burn water, Scout.”

It takes a moment, but her claws retreat and the color of her eyes fades back to brown. “I’m in Derek’s place?” she says when she looks around, obviously confused.

“Yeah,” Lydia answers, and she realizes her hands are shaking. That was cutting it close. “Where did you think you were?” Sometimes she gets a feeling about that sort thing, where a person is inside their own head and that’s how she always knows something’s up with Allison, but for now she just got a feeling of absolute nothingness.

“I don’t know,” she says, before looking up at Stiles. “Thank you.”

Stiles looks around and says, “This was a bad idea,” and puts one arm around Scout and the other Lydia, leading them out without a backwards glance at the twins.

 

 

Scout’s still running on the adrenaline of being able to control herself again when Stiles twists around from his place in the front seat.

“I can read,” he says, and she leans forward to kiss him.

 

 

It’s two days before Halloween, and the five of them ditch the party Lydia originally got them invited to, crashing instead in Scout’s living room. They’ve all lost their taste for horror movies by this point and _Monty Python Search for the Holy Grail_ is playing uselessly in the background. Mrs. McCall is out working, so they’ve got the house to themselves.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Allison asks, “Are any of you staying in Beacon Hill after you graduate?”

“My grades suck, so yeah, probably,” Scout answers. “Commute to the community college the town over.”

When she was younger, Lydia told herself she was going to run all the way across the country to Harvard, or across the Atlantic to Cambridge. Thankfully, California still has one of top five universities in the United States. “Stanford is only thirty-four minutes away if you don’t drive like an old person,” she says, reaching over to grab a few more chips. “I can commute.”

Stiles agrees with her and Isaac with Scout. Allison says, “I’m going into the family business. I won’t be hard finding a college with a business program in the area.”

“So we’re all staying in Beacon Hill,” Stiles says, and stuffs more curly fries into his mouth.

“Yeah, well, can you imagine me in a Harvard or Yale dorm room with a roommate who doesn’t know me,” Lydia says, “when all the sudden I wake up screaming because I sense someone died? Oh, that would be one fun conversation. ‘By the way, roommie, I’m a banshee!’”

Scout laughs. “‘Oh my god, your eyes are red!’” she says, raising her voice a pitch before lowering it to normal and continuing, “‘Sorry, I’m a werewolf. They do that. Do you understand calc by any chance?’”

"We should just all come back after college,” Stiles says. “Lydia can get rich and buy us a townhouse unit. I’ll live with Scout, we’ll hook Allison up with that Kira chick, Lydia will meet some genius at Stanford and I don’t know Isaac, how does Cora sound—hey, I don’t have insta-healing powers!”

As he rubs his arm where Isaac punched him, the other boy says, “I’m pretty sure if I ever tried anything with his sister, Derek would rip my throat out. No, _Cora_ would rip my throat out.”

“If I meet a boy a who can’t accept that I’m a banshee, and my group of friends consists of a few werewolves, a werewolf hunter, and a Stiles,” Lydia says, seriously contemplating it for the first time, “then we are over so fast he won’t even have time to grovel for me back.”

Allison reaches over and gives her a bad high five, considering they’re both lying down. “Good girl,” she says, and King Arthur comes across the Black Knight. “Same with Kira—or any girl. Oh, and at least one of you two always needs to show up at the time of the great reveal as proof.”

“Well, duh,” Scout says. “We’re not letting our friends get marked as crazy.” She pauses before adding, “Well, crazier.”

While taking an unfairly large handful of curly fries, Isaac asks, “Did you seriously make Stiles into his own category?”

“’Course she did. I’m too awesome to be labeled.”

“Shut up, Stiles. You’re human same as me.”

For once, the subject doesn’t take an abrupt turn because they’re thinking too far ahead. They talk about what they’ll major in, what jobs they’ll have, what Lydia will do to win her prizes, and what color they’ll paint their bedroom walls. She doesn’t know how long they spend like that, lying around on the McCall’s living room floor, but at one point they all drift off.

Lydia dreams of electricity and black-eyed foxes running with wolves.

 

 

After they rig Coach’s office to utter perfection, they go back to Stiles’ empty house laughing and in exceptionally good moods. The fact that Dad’s gone means he’s on a case, which is a bad thing, but whatever, they can take a break from worry for the night because Scout lands on her back, pulls back, and says, “You know, I’ve gotten my control back.”

Completely flabbergasted about why she’d take a break from such an important activity, it takes him a moment to register what she means. But, oh. _Oh._ He hadn’t known today could get any better.

“Are you sure?” he asks, but his words get garbled against her mouth and her hands are under his shirt and one of his is fishing around in his top drawer for a condom.

He’s got it out, and she answers, “As long as you are.”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Then his shirt’s over his head, and he scrambles with the buttons on hers and it turns out that taking off a bra is really, really hard when the girl won’t stop laughing at you.

Thank god Dad knocks the next morning, or Stiles would be hearing about no sex on weeknights for the rest of his life.

 

 

Finding the twins back at school isn’t what Scout expected come Monday morning, but here they are anyway. The last two times she saw them weren’t exactly on the best occasions, so she doubts this will be.

Still, because she can’t just ignore them, she asks, “You’re back at school?”

“No,” Ethan answers, “just to talk.”

Yeah, the last two times haven’t been so big on talking either. Stiles steps in next to her. “Ah, that’s kind of a change of pace for you guys,” he says, “seeing as you’re usually just hurting, maiming, killing.”

Aiden ignores him. “You need a pack,” he says. “We need an Alpha.”

Every time someone calls her an Alpha, she feels kind of uncomfortable because honestly, she doesn’t even look the part. For a very good example as to why, both the twins have more than foot on her, same as Isaac. That would be her whole pack, actually. All people more than a foot taller than her. And Stiles must sense her discomfort because he says, “Yeah, definitely not. That’s hilarious.”

“You came to us for help, we helped,” Ethan says, and then glances her. “We’ve helped.”

“You beat her face into a bloody pulp and sent her into a panic attack. In my opinion, that’s actually counterproductive.”

Looking down at her again, Aiden says, “That’s not what my brother meant.”

Oh, awesome. There goes Stiles never finding out. “What’re they talking about?” he asks.

“When everything was still going on, I had a nightmare,” she says, deciding that she can omit some details. “I managed to hurt myself in my sleep—it wasn’t bad—but I screamed. I’m an Alpha, it was basically a signal. They showed up. Isaac kicked them out.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because we went looking for Malia, and that felt more important. I’m sorry.” Before he can say anything else, she quickly turns back to Ethan and Aiden. “Why would I say yes?”

But the twins don’t really get her, of course, so she already knows the reason won’t be a good one. “We’ll make you more powerful,” Aiden says. “There’s no reason to say no.”

Suddenly Isaac is there too, and if her group of friends is actually her “pack” as more than one person has referred to them as, to the twins he’s the only one who matters. “I can think of one,” he says, drawing up behind her. “The two of you holding Derek’s claws while Kali impaled Boyd.” He crosses his arms. “Actually, I don’t know why we’re not impaling them right now.”

With the exception of Allison in her Gerard phase, Isaac’s always been the most violent out of all of them. Scout grabs his arm to hold him back when Aiden tries to start a fight. “Sorry, they don’t trust you,” she says, and starts to walk past them, “and neither do I.”

Ethan and Aiden can find their own pack. She’s satisfied with hers the way it is.

 

 

Even though it hasn’t been happening as often, Scout’s eyes will still change color when she’s stressed. According to her, the same thing happens with Stiles and his words getting scrambled around and Allison and her hands shaking. Melissa’s on the verge of an anxiety attack herself when her ex-husband shows up with his men and a group of local cops, and he doesn’t even understand that his daughter is the one everyone needs to worry for right now. She’s seen Scout survive a lot, but she doesn’t know about a bomb.

At least Stilinski is here, though, thank god, and he leads her away from everyone else. “Glowing eyes,” he repeats. “He actual said that?”

“Those exact words.” Scout should be in fifth period now with her lacrosse coach, Stiles, and Lydia, completely oblivious to what’s happening. Well, she and her friends will know soon enough.

Running his hand down in his face in weariness, Stilinski says, “And having a serial killer going after kids with glowing eyes won’t exactly be a stress free environment.”

“Is there any chance of getting them out of the school?” she asks. “Bringing them to the station maybe? If she thinks any of them are in danger, it gets worse. And if Isaac thinks she’s in danger, he’s not so in control either.”

Apparently it’s a pack thing. Melissa doesn’t really want to understand most days.

Unfortunately, Stilinski shakes his head. “Not without causing suspicious or being barred for favoritism. Everyone knows my son’s group of friends. More than one cop here has a kid in the school.”

 “Then I’ll just have to get in myself,” she says. “There has to be something in here with his scent for them to track if he ends up in the school.”

“Are you sure that’s such a good idea?”

“I hate to say it, but I watched my daughter get shot and the bullet wound heal itself less than a minute later. She’ll be fine.” Or hopefully, anyway.

Then his radio crackles through with a call of  closer eyewitness account. “Good luck, Melissa,” he says, and leaves to follow the rest of the cops and FBI to the school.

Rafael looks like he wants to say something, so she heads in the opposite direction to look for something that’ll work. Scout’s not going into this unprepared if she has any say about it.

 

 

Mom told her and Isaac not to go home alone, so originally he was going to go to Allison’s along with Lydia to help her out and Scout was going to go with Stiles. But then Mr. Yukimura has to go and invite her over for dinner and she really doesn’t know how to say no to a teacher, so now Lydia is going over Stiles’ instead. Before Scout leaves, she stops at Allison’s.

“I’ll put in a good word for you,” she tells her friend, leaning against the bedroom doorway. “Her dad wants her to have a friend, I guess. Invited me over because I saved her from a rabid coyote.”

Raising her eyebrow, Allison says, “And neither of them questioned how you were able to knock over an entire row of lockers?”

She shrugs. “I’m not complaining. I’ll invite her to hang out with the group of us when the whole thing with Barrow is finished if you want.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

Allison goes over and gives her a hug. They don’t touch much anymore, because even though a lot of the barriers that went up after the breakup have come back down again, it can still get awkward sometimes. But now apparently they’ve reached the point where Scout’s comfortable enough to try and get her ex-girlfriend together with another girl through sneaky means. Apparently through her own sneaky means Allison found out Kira likes girls, too.

Oh. Wait. This better not be a hook-you-up-with-my-daughter-thing. She should mention Stiles pretty quick. “I better get back to this,” Allison says, “but thank you. I mean it.”

“Hey, thank my history teacher. He’s the one who invited me over. Which is weird.”

Obviously Allison doesn’t care, so Scout rolls her eyes and slips back through the window. Hopefully this won’t be a complete disaster.

 

 

Of course Dad would invite a classmate over for dinner without warning her beforehand. Of course he would. And of course it would be a classmate she’s talked to like three time, one of which was because the girl saved her from being coyote chow. Also she just loves how he tells her to dress nice because it looks like Scout’s dressed nice, but he’s the girl’s teacher, he should know she dresses like that every day.

Even though, okay, the whole tight black pants, slouchy boots, tucked in silk blouse thing is a look that absolutely works for her. Actually, half the girls in Beacon Hill dress like that, even though it isn’t exactly a well-off, rich town. It’s one of the reasons Kira’s been so afraid to approach anyone—especially the girls. They all look like they belong in glamorous magazines, not walking the halls of a high school and attending classes and, in Scout’s case, playing sports.

Dinner begins as a total disaster, but eventually Mom and Dad let them order a pizza and leave. “I do this with my friends all the time,” Scout says once they’re in Kira’s room with their food. “You should come over some time. We watch old movies and eat what we can get our hands on.”

Make friends is what Dad’s been telling her since day one. Maybe she should finally make the effort. “Are your friends all the ones that were at the picnic table that day?” Kira asks. “I know Allison. I gave her the paper of Bardo. Did you see that?”

“Yeah, it was really great,” Scout answers, but doesn’t tell her what it was for, just like her friend didn’t. “Okay, so you already know Allison—she’d awesome, you’d love her if you got to know her. She’s one of those people you can basically talk to about anything. Lydia’s the redhead, she’s ridiculously smart. Isaac is taller boy, he’s kind of like a puppy. Stiles is my boyfriend and five foot eleven inches of concentrated sass.”

This is basically the definition of a drive-by description that says absolutely nothing about anyone. Still, Kira needs friends. It’s starting to get boring doing nothing all the time. “I’d like that,” she says, and takes out another piece of pizza. “What’s your number?”

They swap phone numbers and Scout sticks around an extra half hour before she has to leave.

Kira isn’t expecting it when the escaped lunatic comes to knock her out with a crowbar to the head.

 

 

Great, she helps save a girl’s life (who actually ends up saving her own) and her reward is dealing with her dad.

Now she sits in between Stiles and Kira and her dad asks, “So, when did you get there?”

“At the same time,” Stiles answers, and Scout can’t believe it’s _her_ father they’re dealing with when _his_ is right behind him.

Not even thirty seconds into the interrogation and her dad already looks so done with this. “Same time as who?”

Scout points to herself and says, “Same time as me.”

“By coincidence?”

“What do you mean ‘coincidence?’” Stiles says, which only annoys him more.

For once, they actually have time to piss him off. The only thing worse than wasting his time is dating Stiles, and she’s doing both. “That’s what I’m asking you,” he says. “Arriving at the same time, was that coincidence?”

“Are you asking me?” she says.

“I think he’s asking me,” Stiles answers for him.

Lydia, joining in their effort, says, “I think he’s asking both of you,” and poor Kira’s just traumatized and confused.

One look at his face shows that her father is also very confused. “Okay, let me answer the questions,” he says, which is backwards, and sure, Scout wants to find out what Kira is, but she’s so loving this right now. Then he realizes what he said, and corrects himself. “Let me ask the questions.”

There you go, she thinks, and crosses her arms.

Stiles winks and points his finger as a job well done.

Ignoring both of them, her dad looks down at his incredibly important papers and continues, “Just so I have this absolutely clear, Barrow was hiding in the chemistry closet at the school. Someone left him a coded message on the blackboard telling him to kill Kira. Then Barrow took Kira to a power substation and tied her up with the intent of electrocuting her, which blacked out the entire town.”

“Sounds about right,” says Stiles.

“How’d you know he’d take her to a power station?” asks her dad.

With the patented _do I look like an idiot_ look, he says, “Well, I knew he was an electrical engineer so where else would he take her?”

“That’s one hell of a deduction there, Stiles.”

“Hey, what can I say, I take after my pops. He’s in law enforcement.”

It takes a real effort not to laugh. Scout hopes her boyfriend appreciates this because it’s the second little wink that almost does her in. Stiles’ dad doesn’t have as much luck, though, but manages to cover it up with a very fake cough. “Stiles, just answer the man,” he says, hand half over his mouth.

With a dead straight face, her boyfriend answers, “I made a good guess.”

Since he’s obviously getting nowhere with them, her dad’s next course of option is to turn to Scout and Kira. “And what were you two doing?”

“Eating sushi.”

“Eating pizza.”

Terrific. “We were eating sushi, but I sucked at hiding the fact that I didn’t like it,” she explains. “We ordered pizza. Therefore, we were eating sushi and then we were eating pizza. With pineapple on it. I know how much you hate that.”

Her dad twists around and says, “Do you believe any of this?”

“To be honest, I haven’t believed a word Stiles’ said since he learned how to speak.” Her boyfriend nods with a hint of pride. “But I think these kids found themselves in the right place at the right time and that girl sitting there is very lucky for it.”

How could anyone ever want him fired? He always says the best things at the right time. But because he says the best things at the best time, her dad has to go and try to prove him wrong. “Kira,” he asks, “is this how you remember it?”

Simultaneously, Scout, Stiles, and Lydia all lean forward. “Yes,” Kira says, and that’s basically passing the group initiation. “Can I get my phone back now?”

Apparently that isn’t possible because the phone is now evidence, and this effectively ends the interrogation. Before Scout can leave to drive Lydia home, which she was planning on, her dad pulls her off to the side. “Look,” he says, “I don’t know why you guys are lying or why Stilinski is content to listen to this crap, but try to remember something: if half this story about Barrow is true, then not only did someone help set him loose, but he’s a pawn in their little game. A mass murderer’s bad enough. A mass murderer being controlled by someone? Far worse.”

Yeah, she figured that out for herself, thanks. It doesn’t take a genius to connect the dots if it’s someone else’s handwriting on the blackboard. “I get it,” she says. “Now are you going to tell me anymore common sense and accuse me of anything else, or can I go bring my friend home?”

His mouth tightens. “Get on home yourself, too,” he says. “It’s a school night.”

“I’m aware,” she says, and turns away, grabbing Lydia’s hand and leading her out without saying goodbye to Stiles first. Considering it’s her dad they’re dealing with, she knows he’ll understand.

 

 

“So, Kira asked me to help her get her phone from the evidence room and delete some photos.”

Allison looks up from she’s studying for her biology exam as Scout comes over to drop into the seat next to Stiles. Despite being traumatized as hell, Kira actually talked to her today and said Scout invited her to hang out, so whatever word her friend put in must’ve been a good one. “What _kind_ of pictures?” she asks as Stiles says, “That’s not going to be easy.”

“Uh, naked ones?”

Isaac chokes on his apple juice. Allison is liking this girl more and more and she’s barely even talked to her.

 

 

Being face to face with Mr. McCall is never a fun time, but this is the first they’ve ever been completely alone, which means Stiles can speak his mind. It’s a rare and precious opportunity, and will also take up more time for Scout and Kira to finish up deleting those pictures.

When Mr. McCall brushes him off and swipes his phone through the key slot, Stiles stops him. “You know, this attitude that you have towards my dad,” he says, “you can dress it up to all the professional disapproval that you want, but I know the real reason you don’t like him.”

“Is that so?” he says.

“Yeah, because he knows something you don’t want him to know,” Stiles answers and unlike him, Scout never got panic attacks, but she got a slew of trust of issues. “And guess what,” he adds when Mr. McCall goes to step forward, “I know it too.”

It fades pretty quick, but for a moment he does get that apprehensive look Stiles was going for. “Go home,” Mr. McCall says. “There’s a curfew—and I mean your house, not my daughter’s. The curfew means that everyone needs to return _home._ ”

“Well, Dad and Melissa basically have joint custody over us,” Stiles tells him because it’s true. “As long as we’re at one of the two houses and they know, neither of them really care and that’s the whole point of the ‘your own house rule,’ isn’t it? So if you’re planning on being a creep and checking, I can’t guarantee which place Scout and I’ll be.”

Stiles isn’t sure if Scout and Kira are done yet, but he knows he won’t be able to hold off Mr. McCall for much longer. “I don’t like you,” the man says bluntly, “and I don’t like that you’re dating my daughter.”

“Melissa likes me, though, and she’s the one who’s talked the Scout every day for the past five years, so I’ll take her opinion over yours on this one,” he says and starts to move to the side, figures he should get out of here before he slips up and Mr. McCall finds a loophole to get him arrested. “Hate me all you want, because as long as Scout’s happy, I don’t really care.”

“Go home, Stiles,” Mr. McCall says again, ignoring him, and slips through the door. From the lack of yelling, he goes under the happy assumption that the other two are outside and safe from harm.

 

 

Scout and Stiles invite Kira along to the blackout party to “hang out with their friends” which basically translates to “shove the girl in Allison’s direction and see if they have any actual chemistry.” Before they get inside, though, Kira pulled her off to the side to ask if the lights looked like a demon, but on a second look, Scout said they looked more like a fox protecting her. Then they’re all in a group, though Isaac looks terrified that they’re using Derek’s apartment, and it isn’t long before Allison is leading Kira away.

As she lets Stiles start on her face with a random paintbrush, she shouts over the music, “They look good together!”

When her boyfriend laughs, the sound is stolen by everyone else’s voices. “I’m not really sure if it matters with all the lights, but your eyes are seriously red right now!”

“Really?” She blinks rapidly a couple of times before realizing that _oh_ , the air isn’t foggy with smoke or anything, this is literally heat vision. With this many bodies around, it looks weird. Kira’s fox light is visible too. When the blurry orange around everyone fades, it looks almost too dark. “Is it gone?”

“Yeah, it is! Now stand still so I can paint your face!”

Even though she can’t see it, she can feel from the brushstrokes that he’s being utterly obnoxious and drawing the shape of a wolf down the side of her face. They’re standing still in the middle of an apartment turned backlight dance floor and Allison is off wooing a girl with the lights of a fox shaped around her body that Scout doesn’t understand. Isaac’s close enough over there that if anything goes wrong, she shouldn’t have to worry, and if it weren’t for the paintbrush to her face, she’d look around for everyone else, too.

The only problem with this place is that the music is too loud.

Right when Stiles finishes up, and bends down to give her a kiss, she hears what sounds like her name. And the only way to hear that is for it to be screamed _loud._ “Eyes, Scout!” Stiles says again. “What’s wrong?”

“Wait here!” she tells him. “Just…go sit on the stairs or something, I’ll be right back!”

“Scout!”

Even with her superior hearing and eyesight, it takes her a long time to find Lydia. When she does, her friend is cold and Derek is disrupting the party.

Stiles is gone when she gets back inside.

 

 

When Scout calls, Stiles picks up first ring. “ _Oh, thank god,_ ” she says, “ _you’re okay. Where are you?_ ”

His handwriting is on the board and the key opened the chemistry closet. This isn’t something he wants to talk about over the phone. “Look, I realized something and had to run,” he answers, trying not to sound too freaked out. “You weren’t there. I should’ve texted you. Can we meet up?”

“ _Yeah_ ,” she says immediately. “ _Not right this minute, though. I’m heading over to Allison’s with Isaac. It’s a long story that I’ll tell you in person, but these shadow monsters attacked Isaac, the twins, and Lydia, and right when the sun came up they were staring at me, so. Pressing issue. That’s about all I know about them. Allison’s dad knows, though._ ”

Shadow monsters and his handwriting is pointing a murder in the direction of a kill. Oh, this is shaping up to be an awesome day. “Figure it out and call me,” he tells her. “I’ll keep my phone on.”

“ _Good. Don’t do that again, I thought they got you too._ ”

“I’m sorry.” He means it, too.

“ _Yeah, I know._ ”

They hang up and he stares down at the key, wondering how the hell it ended up there and why he can’t remember writing on the blackboard.

 

 

Scout puts Allison on Kira watch once evening hits, since the two of them basically spent all night chatting it up, and says to meet up at her house to find Stiles. Then the thing that she doesn’t do but should is explain the extra information about what’s potentially trying to kill her to her boyfriend. But how could she? He thinks he’s the one who helped a psychotic serial killer murder people and has compelling evidence she’s refusing to believe.

First thing she does is have him count fingers, which they haven’t done in a while, because things that were there suddenly aren’t. Then she tells him to go home. “I’ll call you after school,” she says, taking him by the hand and leading him in the direction of the school nurse. He feels hot, like he’s running a fever. He’ll be allowed to go home easy. “We’re all meeting up at my place. If you feel up to it, you should come too.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, but doesn’t really seem to be paying attention. “I’ll do that.”

Outside the nurse’s office she gives him a quick kiss on the cheek before running off to class. He better be okay, she thinks, and that little voice in the back of her head says he won’t.

 

 

Being an Alpha means she can tell when members of her pack are in trouble and she feels it like a jolt at the end of the school day. But Isaac’s with Allison and Mr. Argent, and he’s good himself, so he’ll get out of it. Until then this means she needs to have Kira over her house without Allison bringing her, which means dropping the twins. It’s shockingly easy.

She isn’t expecting to find out her new friend is a kitsune. She also isn’t expecting her dad to show up at the most inconvenient time _as usual._ Doesn’t he has someone else other than her family and the Stilinskis to bother? “What are you here?” she asks. “And why do you still have a key?”

This is, in fact, a very important question, because he shouldn’t have one. He left years ago and they liked it that way. “Funny you should mention keys,” her dad says, “because while I have a key to this house, I’m not exactly sure how _you_ got a key to my office.” Then he spins around the laptop with his usual overdramatic flare and flips it open. Right there is a picture of her and Kira. Shit. Before she can do anything, he continues, “This is kind of thing _usually_ begins with something along the lines of ‘it’s not what you think’ or ‘I can explain.’”

Outside, day is rapidly changing into night. They don’t have long before everything goes to hell, and he can’t be here for that. One, because he can’t be allowed to see her and two, because she might potentially maim him if he is. “Dad,” she says, though she feels like she has to grind out the word, “let me help you out. You need leave.”

"I will,” he answers. “With a satisfactory explanation.”

“Go get a warrant.”

“I don’t need a warrant, I’m your father!”

Oh, oh—no. Just, no. No on _so_ many levels it’s not even funny. “You’re not my father, you’re a gene donor,” she snaps. “I got my hair color from you and that’s all I got. So you’re not allowed to play Tough Dad with me and next time you ever want to pull the family card again, make sure it’s at time when I’m not only a means to an end.”

Mom’s here now, approaching from behind him, and he doesn’t even seem to notice. “Hey,” she says, putting her stuff down on the table. “What’s going on?”

Not even looking at her, he answers, “Maybe one of you should explain.”

Right now she really wants Stiles, but he didn’t even pick up his phone. Hopefully that means he’s finally getting some sleep. The whole situation doesn’t improve when the sun goes down and demon ninjas appear from nothing.

Maybe she should’ve stuck by the twins, True Alpha or not.

And okay, she really might not like the guy—or maybe even hate him, actually—but that doesn’t mean she wants him dead. “Dad, wait,” she says as he starts approaching one of the shadow things, but he doesn’t listen to her because he never did, so why start now? “Dad!”

The sword goes clean through his shoulder, and Scout goes to move forward but then a door is open and Mom’s dragging her dad’s body away and Derek’s suddenly in the room, full werewolf form. Right as the fighting starts and Mom goes to set up the ash, Ethan and Aiden break through and for a second it almost feels like they have a chance.

“Where did you come from?” she asks Derek once the demon ninjas are trapped outside.

His face is back to normal now and when she saw him yesterday she sort of slapped him for not letting her know he was back. Actually, she’s kind of surprised he even showed up. “I was following you,” he answers, like it was totally obvious.

“For how long?”

“All day.”

From the other room, Mom shouts, “Scout! It isn’t looking good in here!”

“We’re talking about this later,” she tells Derek and runs over to the office. “What’s wrong?”

Her dad’s bleeding out on the couch and with the amount of adrenaline running through her body, she doesn’t have the ability to care right now. Maybe that makes her a bad person, or maybe it just makes her a werewolf with a concrete mission, she doesn’t know. All she wants, really, is for no one else to get hurt.

Sometimes tells her that’s not going to happen.

 

 

For the past four days she’s been crashing with Stiles at either his place or hers and the one night they don’t sleep together has to be the night he gets kidnapped. “It didn’t look like that yesterday,” she says as Isaac turns the key in the ignition because he claimed she was too shaken up to drive. “I woke up in that exact spot this morning.”

Her friend drives one handed, and uses the other to reach over and rub her back. “We’ll get to him, then figure out what happened to him,” he tells her, “but we’ll find him. He’ll be fine.”

“I’m calling Derek.”

“Too many werewolves along with Lydia won’t mix with the cops,” Isaac points out, but she doesn’t care. Stiles is out there missing and yeah, she gets that his dad is a police officer and it’s his job, but by scent would be so much quicker. “The group of us will be enough.”

He’s right, and she knows he’s right, because realistically Beacon Hill isn’t all that big of a town and they’ve got Lydia now. It’s just that she’s not used to feeling useless anymore. “I want all the help we can get,” she says anyway, and pulls her phone out of her pocket. “I’ll tell Derek not to be seen. He’s good at skulking around.”

“Scout, Stiles is going to be fine.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

Derek picks up on the first ring and he’s on the job before they even reach the station.

 

 

“Mom, can I stay with him?”

From the very start of their friendship, Stiles and her daughter had always borderline inseparable, but somehow dating made them even worse. For Melissa, who already loves the boy like her own son, the crack in Scout’s voice is only making things harder. “Sweetheart, you have to go to school,” she answers, shaking her head. “I’ll call you out if he wakes up again, or if we have to run tests—”

“He’s not sick, Mom,” Scout cuts in and the first few tears start leaking out. “He doesn’t _smell_ sick—”

“Scout, you can’t pick up on everything,” Melissa says, trying to be as gentle as she can because she has her suspicions. “And who knows? Maybe it’s just a bad case of sleep deprivation in combination with those replacement sacrifices. Like your eyes.”

Now her daughter’s crying, messy and real. She sits on the edge of Stiles’ bed, still holding his hand. “Do you want me to call Lydia?” Melissa asks, pulling tissues from the box on the end table for Scout to dry her eyes. “So you don’t have to drive.”

“Just give me a minute to calm down and I—I’ll be able to do it,” Scout says, voice breaking at almost every word as uses the tissues to clean up her face. “Do you swear to call me out of school? For any reason.”

Melissa reaches over and moves her hair out of her face. “I promise,” she says because she understands. “The moment something happens I’ll call the office, okay?”

Though Scout nods, she doesn’t seem to be paying attention much, and Melissa debates on calling one of her friends anyway. If not Lydia, who might already be at school since Allison probably is with Isaac by this point, at least Derek. But she doesn’t, and lets her daughter go with just a hug. Scout gives a low kind of nod to Stiles’ dad, who was waiting outside the door before running, purposely not letting him see her face.

After she’s around the corner, he says, “She was crying, wasn’t she?”

Melissa looks in the direction she went, trying to get the _he doesn’t_ smell _sick_ out of her head. “Yeah,” she answers. “Yeah, she was. I think all the kids blame themselves—Scout’s got this theory that Lydia found where he thought he was and she can’t figure out why the rest of them couldn’t find him.”

“Well, we found him, and that’s what matters.”

No, not entirely. She explains Stiles’ symptoms from the other day and Stilinski shows he’s been making a list of his own. God, she can’t even imagine what this must be like for him. Before he leaves, she adds, “I told her I’d call her out of school if we ran any tests.”

He doesn’t look surprised. “Good,” he says. “Real good. Sometimes you have to be there, even if it hurts.”

By the time she met Stiles, Claudia had already been dead for two years, but Melissa at least _feels_ like she helped raise him. This is tearing her up, too. “You know what she’ll do if he has it, right?” she says before she figures she should lay this out now. “I mean, she’ll offer first, but they’re Scout and Stiles. He’d take it.”

Stilinski gets this smile on his face, small and sad.

“Melissa,” he says, “if it keeps my son alive, I don’t care what Scout has to do.”

 

 

They do the tests at six. Stiles looks impossibly small in his hospital gown as he explains to her what the doctors are looking for.

“Stiles, if you have it,” she says, and wishes Lydia had come along to stand with her in the waiting room because she knows she won’t be able to handle the other side of the glass, “we’ll do something. _I’ll_ do something.”

He nods, even if it isn’t noticeable, and his heartbeat, which was pounding with fear, slows just a bit. Then he reaches forward and pulls her into a hug so tight it hurts.

 

 

By some miracle, she’s not alone in the hospital waiting room. Maybe Derek smelled the chemo waves or whatever, or maybe he was just around, but he’s here. No matter how depressing the information is that he’s delivering, at least she’s not waiting alone.

He takes a seat next to her on one of the uncomfortable chairs. “I know this is probably a completely inappropriate thing to worry about right now,” she says, because Stiles is possessed and  possibly responsible for killing or almost killing people, “but what if he really is sick? What if being vulnerable is what let the nogitsune get inside him to begin with?”

Of course, none of them have ever really dealt with this before, with the exception of Mr. Argent who freely admitted to not even having half the information he needed, so it’s not like Derek knows. She hadn’t expected him too. “Then we still get it out of him,” he answers, “but whatever illness he has stays.”

"It won’t.”

“What do you mean?”

Her heads ball up into the fabric of her skirt.  “I said if he has it, I’ll give him the bite,” she tells him. “I can’t—he’s Stiles. I know I said I wouldn’t bite anybody, but, well, he’s always trying to protect me even though I don’t technically need it. It’s my turn to return the—protection!”

“The struggle was Stiles trying to protect us from himself,” Derek says as it clicks for him too, and they both stand. “I guess we should figure out why.”

It takes five minutes even by their speed to hit the hospital roof. For Scout, five minutes have never felt so long in her life.

 

 

Kira knew she could do it. She _knew_ and she got scared and ran away and because she hadn’t helped right away, Isaac Lahey is on the ground in a puddle of water.

By the time the electricity in Kira’s body fades, Scout is next to her friend—pack member?—and calling for someone to get her mom. “He should be healing,” Allison says as Kira drops down across from the two of them. “Why isn’t he healing?”

Scout shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she answers, and she’s holding her hand and for some reason the veins in both their arms are black. “But god, it’s really hurting him. Where’s my mom?”

“Is there anything I can do?” Kira asks because she doesn’t understand how this works yet. “He was electrocuted. Maybe I can take it away.”

“Since you don’t know why you’re doing, we shouldn’t risk it,” Allison says, and slaps her friend’s shoulder. “Scout, stop. He’s unconscious; he can’t feel it anyway. You’re only hurting yourself.”

The other girl _looks_ like she’s in pain, even though she isn’t the one with got zinged with a cut wire in water. What was the kid thinking, stepping into that? Then again, if Kira stopped being afraid herself earlier, she could’ve prevented this. Scout says, “I’m an Alpha, I can take it,” but before Allison can do anything else, the black fades and she shouts, “Mom, over here!”

Mrs. McCall comes along with a stretcher and a bunch of other people, and the three of them get herded off to the side. Scout’s clutching her hand, and her fingers look all cramped up with tears running down her face. “I’m going to try to find Stiles,” she says. “Or whatever’s possessing him, anyway.”

“Stiles is possessed?” Scout nods, and Allison pushes her hair out of her face. “Okay. This is bad. You go look for Stiles, I’ll go follow Isaac, try to figure out why he’s not healing.”

Since there’s still this crushing feeling of _you could have prevented this_ , Kira asks, “Is there anything I can do?”

But Scout’s already gone, running off in the direction of a hospital side entrance Kira hadn’t noticed before, and Allison tells her, “Come with me. It’s caused by electricity. Maybe you’re right and we can figure it out if we’re careful.”

They barely make it through the doors before Kira gets pulled to the side by her mom. She wants to kick and scream and say she needs to help, but she can’t risk making a scene, so she shoots Allison the biggest _I’m sorry_ look she can muster and lets herself be dragged away.

If only she’d done something sooner.

 

 

Even by scent, Scout can’t find Stiles. Neither can Derek or the twins. Since the same thing apparently happened last time, Melissa’s starting to think whatever’s possessing him has the power to block off their best means of tracking him. Her daughter won’t let her tell Stiles’ father what’s going on, and she’s so stressed out Melissa’s not willing to push it.

On the first day Stiles is missing, Scout doesn’t go to school, just looks. When Melissa comes back from work at eleven though, she’s there, mindlessly taking down notes of where she checked, which means where he _isn’t._

“You know,” she says without looking up as Melissa enters her bedroom, “wolves have packs—strength in numbers and all that. For werewolves it’s a little different, because having a pack _literally_ ups the strength of your abilities and stuff. It’s hard to explain.” She puts an X in her neat little box drawn next to the word Preserve. “Jennifer, the Alpha pack, and even Derek have basically all called my friends my pack, so I guess that’s more…traditional? I don’t know. But I feel like right now it’s falling to pieces. And I’m not even seventeen yet.”

Scout scribbles down something else. It’s like she’s checked all of Beacon Hill, and if she had the help of three others, there’s a chance she did. “Last I checked, you saved the whole town a few months ago,” Melissa says, and puts an arm around her shoulders. Since she found out what’s really going on, she’s noticed that Scout has this tendency to take on the responsibility of the notion that she has to save everyone, and she can think of a reason or two of where her daughter got that idea. Telling her it wasn’t up to her to make sure everyone in Beacon Hill was safe all the time worked for a single summer. “If anyone can find Stiles, it’s you.  And you still have the others to help you.”

“It’s not _just_ Stiles.” She pushes the notebook away from her. “This is going to sound _really_ creepy and it’s going to be _really_ hard to explain, but by werewolf standards, the only actual pack member I have—I think, I’m not actually sure where Derek stands right now—is Isaac. And he’s hurt. A while ago a girl said losing a pack member is like losing a limb. I didn’t think she meant that literally.”

“He’s going to make it, Scout.”

“Yeah, but right now he’s still hurt.”

Really, Melissa’s starting to understand that she can’t actually understand. Honestly, she doesn’t think her daughter really gets it either. “Get some sleep, honey,” she says, and pulls Scout away from the desk by the back of the wheeled chair, something she thought she’d never have to do. “Tomorrow you’ll have to go school again. Maybe in the morning we’ll have news.”

Without arguing, Scout gets up and heads towards the bathroom. She hasn’t looked this miserable since before she regained control.

Melissa desperately hopes she won’t wake up tomorrow to sheets covered in blood.

 

 

Scout takes as much pain out Isaac as she can handle at once. Considering the number of times she’s sliced herself open in her sleep or just to stop shifting a few months back, she’s got a remarkably high tolerance.

Then she pushes past it.

Apparently Allison doesn’t approve. “I’ll drive you to school,” she says, taking Scout’s arm and pressing her thumb in circles around the wrist where it hurts the most. “Lydia or Kira can bring you back during your free period to pick it up.”

Normally she’d point out that she usually drives one handed anyway, but Isaac was in a _lot_ of pain, and she took away most of it. For now, anyway. The pain’s spread into her chest. “Yeah,” she says, letting her friend lead her out of the hospital and straight past her car. “Yeah, okay.”

Neither of them talk on their way to school.

 

 

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’m here now, I’m okay.”

Stiles—and really Stiles, apparently, who smells like Stiles and whose heart beats likes Stiles—holds onto her tightly. Getting Ethan and Aiden to back down was surprisingly easy and her boyfriend looks sleep deprived with his hair messier than usual and scared out his mind, but he’s here and that’s what matters.

“I thought you were gone. Like, really, actually gone.”

He tucks her under his chin, rubs her back, and she feels kind of stupid that it’s him comforting her instead of the other way around. “I swear it’s me,” he says. “I don’t know where I’ve been the past two days or what I’ve been doing, but this is me, I promise.”

Something settles deep inside her, tucked behind her heart next to the darkness she’s learned to ignore, and she ignores this too. Instead she believes him because she has to.

 

 

After already removing _that_ much pain away from Isaac, Scout doesn’t know how much more she can handle, but Coach is panicking and making himself worse, so she has to try.

Unfortunately, she can only take enough to get him to pass out. Stiles says, “I could’ve killed him. What if it’d been his head, or his throat—”

“But it wasn’t,” she says, because now he’s panicking too and there’s blood on his hands. “And he’s going to be all right.”

Then she hears an ambulance, and Ethan states that he hears an ambulance, and Scout doesn’t like the tone Stiles uses when he says “and my dad.”

 

 

During the entire thing with the school bus, he holds her hand. His dad keeps glancing back at them, even though his eyes should probably be on the bus the whole time.

Whatever’s inside Stiles is probably still there, she knows, and whatever added strength the nogitsune gives him means that when they see his dad’s name tag, he squeezes her hand so hard he almost breaks it.

 

 

Taking the pain of the dying deputy feels different than taking the pain of Coach or Isaac or one of the dogs.

The man dies like that, hands still joined, and it feels like Scout very painfully sucked his life into hers. Stiles’ dad is shouting at them to move and she doesn’t really hear it and from the look on his face she thinks her boyfriend gets what he just asked her to do. When he starts to stand, he reaches down and takes her with him, leading her away. Right now he really shouldn’t be the support when he’s the one with a psychotic fox inside him.

Then Kira’s there saying the oni are coming and it’s like everything had been going in slow motion without Scout realizing and now they’re going at the right pace again, or maybe faster, and she grabs onto Stiles instead of him onto her. “We need to get you out of here,” she says, and pulls him along by the hand, away from the wreckage and his dad, who he keeps watching. God, he must see this all as his fault. “We can go to work, okay? But you’ve got to drive. My car’s at the hospital.”

They all pile into his car and she wants to keep touching him to remind herself that he’s there, but she can’t, and it’s awful and Kira’s in the back, confused. Scout feels bad, because it’s like the girl only ever gets half explanations but helps them anyway—like she missed out on this huge inside joke, but the people on the inside don’t find it funny, either—and right now there’s nothing else to do except trust each other.

She just hopes the mountain ash holds out for long enough to keep Stiles safe.

 

 

The sword’s not just _in_ her, but _through_ her and she can actually feel the wound trying to heal itself around the blade and repeatedly reopening. When the nogitsune uses Stiles’ fingers to dance against the handle, it moves, and she feels blood pool inside her mouth.

Even before she became a werewolf, Stiles never once appeared threatening to her at all. Now his nails make metallic clinking sounds against the handle. “Okay?” the nogitsune says, and even something about his voice seems different.

She’s got a sword shoved through her stomach and all she can think is what this must be doing to Stiles, who’s got to be trapped in there somewhere, watching all this happen. “Please don’t,” she answers, because if this thing makes him kill his own girlfriend, he’s never going to recover from that.

When he says, “It’s okay,” and runs his fingers through her hair, it’s the same movement and tone he uses on her when everything gets to be too much. His other hand wraps around the handle before yanking it upwards.

And then giving it an extra couple of twists.

“Does it hurt? Look at me,” he says as he keeps turning, and she does, and because he’s uses Stiles’ voice. “Really should’ve done your reading, Scout. See, a nogitsune feeds off chaos, strife, pain. This morning you took it from Isaac, and you took it from Coach, and then from the dying deputy. All that pain, you took it all. Now, give it to me.”

She feels it leaving her, right through her temple where his hand is finally still in her hair, and through her mouth full of blood where he kisses her like Stiles would, and somehow it hurts even worse than taking it. If it weren’t from his grip on the sword running through her, she might’ve collapsed. When she tries to pull herself away, the grip of his fingers in her hair tightens and the blade cuts into another few parts of her that shouldn’t be cut into. It seems like an eternity before he finally, _finally_ breaks the kiss and she thinks she hasn’t felt this violated since the day she was turned into a werewolf.

“You really have to learn, Scout,” he’s saying as she regains some form of coherency, corner of his lips dyed red, “you really have to learn. Never trust a fox.” The hand that was in her hair waves in front of his face like he’s telling her off before putting it on her waist and pulling her forward, straight on the now evened out blade, so the only thing obstructing a hug is the handle. He’s still got one hand on that, one arm wrapped around her shoulders now, and she can feel his lips moving against her temple when he says, “Mm-hm. ‘Cause they’re tricksters. They’ll fool you. Being in love won’t change that. They’ll fool everyone.”

“Not everyone.”

Then Deaton’s there, and he’s shoving a needle into Stiles’ neck before she can tell him to be careful. At least he falls slow, doesn’t hit his head, and her boss has hand on the sword too. She can feel how bad off the angle of it is, know it’s in almost to the handle, but she’s guessing removing or breaking that part off probably isn’t easy because he rips out every inch of it in the long way. “What was that?” she asks quickly, even though her words come out thick with the blood still caught in her mouth. “Was that a cure, is he okay?”

Even though it’s working from the outside to the inside, she can feel the wound closing up already. “The fox is poisoned, but not dead,” Deaton answers, and she reaches up to wipe away her tears. Over the last couple of days she’s cried a lot  and now the nogitsune just made her boyfriend twist around a sword in her stomach. “Not yet.”

She goes to step forward to make sure he’s all right, but the still healing wound protests painfully. Deaton catches her before she can fall.

 

 

Scout slams on the brakes a little too abruptly when she pulls up to the side of the road and flings the door open, getting to Stiles right before he admits himself in the Eichen House. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she says, blocking off her boyfriend and his dad.

Neither of them look at her when his dad answers, “Because we wanted to avoid something like this.”

If she seems upset, she doesn’t care because, well, she _is_ and she thinks she has right to be. “It’s only seventy-two hours,” Stiles tell her like somehow that’s meant to make her feel better.

“This is the place Barrow came from,” she says and feels her hands shaking. “The guy had a tumor inside him filled with flies.” She looks to his dad, trying to get an ally in on this, and adds, “You don’t know everything yet.”

Unfortunately, her plan falls flat. “I know enough,” he says. “Nogitsune, kitsune, oni or whatever they’re called—”

“No, that’s actually all surprisingly correct.” Stiles is so not helping right now.

Instead of looking at his son, Stiles’ dad continues to focus on her. “Scout,” he says, “I saw an MRI that looked exactly like my wife’s. And it terrifies me.” Yeah, it terrifies both of them, and they’re throwing the feelings off in waves. “I’m headed down tomorrow to talk to a specialist.”

In this case, _she’s_ the specialist—she and Deaton and Derek and Mr. Argent, even if those last two are currently locked in jail. Stiles doesn’t _smell_ sick. “Why are you putting him in here?” she asks, desperate just make someone get it.

Then her boyfriend says, “He’s not,” and it’s like she forgets how to breathe. “It’s my decision.”

"Stiles, I can’t help you if you’re in here.”

“And I can’t hurt you.”

“Deaton’s got some ideas, Argent’s calling people,” she says, “and if we can’t—”

He cuts her off by taking her by the arm and pulling her away from his dad. “Scout, I watched myself twist a sword around in you and couldn’t do anything about it,” he answers and she notices the way he avoids touching her shoulders, where the nogitsune mostly kept his hands, and waist where he pulled her down the blade. Then he leans forward and kisses her forehead. “If you can’t,” he continues, pressing his face close to hers, “make sure I never get out.”

Before she can say anything, he’s gone, his dad right behind him, and the electronic gate shuts in her face.

 

 

First day there and Stiles runs into Malia fucking Tate. He saved the girl’s life and his reward?

A punch to the face.

Life’s a bitch, he decides before he blacks out, watching the werecoyote get dragged away. Life’s a bitch, and then you die.

 

 

It’s not until they have something resembling a plan that Lydia pulls her into a hug. Her friend smells like strawberries and fresh laundry detergent and because of Jackson, at least has an inkling of knowing how she feels. Sure, Lydia didn’t know about all this when her boyfriend got turned and controlled, but she had to watch the end result.

Scout doesn’t want the same end result.

“You, Allison, and I,” Lydia says quietly, squeezing her tight. “When all this is over, we’re buying frozen yogurt and watching shitty movies.”

Even though she can’t find it in her to answer, Scout agrees. From the way Lydia rubs her back, she thinks her friend understands that.

 

 

Sure, Kira knows this is all very dangerous and sure, she knows this is a bad idea, but she also feels like she owes it them to try. After all, regardless of what everyone says, she still feels at least a little responsible. She _could_ have stopped that attack on Isaac, Barrow used her energy to do this to Stiles, and Scout, Lydia, and Allison are a bunch of nervous wrecks because of that. Considering that she helped do this, she has to help fix it.

If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Or however the saying goes.

So she shows Scout that she’s been practicing with a katana and how fast she’s been picking it up—scary fast, actually. It isn’t until after she finishes that she realizes how warily the other girl looks at her. “What’s wrong?” she asks because she knows Allison is amazing at weapons too and maybe this means Kira isn’t actually as good as she thinks she is. “Was that bad?”

With a quick shake of her head, Scout answers, “No, it was good. Really good. Just, when you’ve been nearly gutted with one by your own boyfriend, you sort of lose any fondness for them.”

Oh. It’s not that Kira had _forgotten_ that, exactly, but it also hadn’t really crossed her mind. She was just too excited at maybe being able to help. “Uh, you don’t need to worry about me,” she says awkwardly. “I’m not going to hurt you…or your friends.”

Even though she’s not the best in the world at reading people, she’s pretty sure the look on the other girl’s face means _that’s what he said too._

 

 

Since she doesn’t want to kill anyone and Isaac’s hurt, Scout is far from fighting at full power; the other werewolf knocks her down pretty fast.

“You have the eyes of an Alpha,” he says, “but not the strength.”

It’s actually how depressing how true that is right now, but then the twins are down and they’re attacking, which is bad, but at least it gives her a moment to breath. When both she and Lydia shout at them to stop, naturally they both question her decision. Really, and they still wonder why she won’t accept them into her pack?

Aiden and Ethan say he’s dangerous, she answers, “So are we,” and as she takes the finger and scroll from the werewolf’s hand, she continues, “and he looks smart enough to remember that. We’re here to save a life, not end one.”

Then she drops the finger and turns to leave. Her unofficial pack follows and the other werewolf makes no move to follow them.

 

 

When Malia moves in to kiss him, Stiles puts his hands up to block her. Even with his brain short circuiting, he’s not an idiot. “I’ve got a girlfriend,” he tells her and he knows she’s pretty much an eight-year-old trapped inside a sixteen-year-old’s body, but still. She should understand why this is a bad thing. “A girlfriend that I actually love kind of a lot.”

There’s an awkward sort of moment where neither of them do either. Then she scoots away and says, “Sorry. Didn’t know.”

“Yeah, the fox thing inside my head already almost got me to torture her,” he says, not sure why he’s admitting this to some technically-kid. “I’m not up to adding cheating to my list of instances where I severely fuck her over.”

“I already said I was sorry.”

“But just—yeah, I mean, I’m sorry too.”

He’s not quite sure what he’s apologizing sure. Maybe it’s that he probably just screwed her out of her first kiss. Now they sit there awkwardly next to each other and he wishes he never came here in the first place.

That’s when he realizes what he has to do to figure it all out, and it’s a relief in more ways than one.

 

 

Usually, Scout’s up to helping just about anyone, but on their list of priorities right now, everything is so far below getting the nogitsune out of Stiles that nothing else matters. Which means Allison isn’t surprised that she’s _really_ surprised when Malia Tate shows up out of nowhere asking for her help. “I’m sort of in the middle of something,” Scout says, crossing her arms and leaning back against the table of her kitchen. Lydia is here too, and Kira. Aiden is keeping watch over Isaac for the next few hours and Ethan realized that since he has a connection to the group, Danny might be in trouble too, so he’s off keeping guard over him. “Can you stick out your dad _not_ trying to kill you with animal traps for at least a week?”

When Lydia had gone to protest after Malia tried to blame Scout, who they haven’t told about the other girl being Peter’s daughter yet, for basically ruining her coyote life, Allison actually had to step on her foot to get her to stop; no reason to make the situation escalate further when they’re all already on the verge of snapping. The Nemeton side effects are coming back from the stress level, which means they might need her dad if any shooting is necessary, and Lydia is just being Lydia on panic mode. Malia says, “Stiles promised that if I helped him, he knew someone who could help me. The woman at the hospital who knew about all this said that someone was you and gave me this address to find you.”

“Miss Morrell probably should have mentioned we were in the middle of an investigation,” Allison says, trying to deflect because when they were dating, she never saw what a protective Scout looked like from an outside perspective, but she can actually be pretty scary. “Can you please just tell us about the last time you saw Stiles—”

But Malia has the mistake of answering, “If I tell you where Stiles is, will you help me learn how to get control?”

Scout’s eyes flash red and the other girl whimpers, shrinking away. “We might be different species,” she tells her, “but you obviously still count as an omega. So you’re going to tell me the last place you saw my boyfriend _right now_ or I’ll do that again the next time you open your mouth. You’ll get my help, but only once this is finished and he makes it out alive because you are so low on my list of things I care about right now, it’s not even funny.”

“What did you _do_ to her?” Kira asks, sounding almost scandalized and okay, Allison is too so she gets it. Scout is pretty much the sweetest person in all of existence, but this isn’t sweet at all.

“I got her to shut up,” she answers bluntly as Lydia says, “Scout, we have a plan. Just take a deep breath and try to remember that.”

Malia, not looking so tough now, explains about the Eichen House and breaking open the wall and how they got tied to the chairs but Stiles saved her. Allison wonders how the girl could’ve missed the fact that suddenly he wasn’t the same person at all when he was probably the most sane one there, but decides not to question it. “Thanks,” Scout says when she finishes. “I’ll find you when all this is over.”

Right now it feels like this will never be over and that terrifies Allison more than she wants to admit.

 

 

Ever since the nogitsune tricked her the first time around, took control of Stiles’ body in the MRI and ran away with him, Scout’s been on a pretty short fuse. And she might not be very bright, especially in something like psychology, but she can figure out why—she’s shoving down at that panic she’s trying not to feel, so when it comes out, it comes out closer to anger than anything else.

So, really, she thinks she should get a free pass at really not wanting to listen to Mrs. Yukimura’s bedtime story. “Look, I get it,” she says because she can tell where this is going, “this is going to end with somehow this Rhys guy getting possessed and you having to kill him because ‘history repeats itself’ or whatever. But right now you’re married, you have an _amazing_ daughter. And you said the fact that the nogitsune is here because of you and I’m pretty sure at least part of me has been in love with Stiles since the day I met him. Just because you couldn’t figure out an alternative and lost the one you love because of something you brought on yourself doesn’t mean I have to do the same because of something that happened to us by accident. So please, just stop stalling for nightfall, call off the oni so I don’t get stabbed again, and tell us what to do.”

“My daughter told me what he did to you,” Mrs. Yukimura answers, still going about fixing the sword at the same pace. “Do you really believe that without the lichen, he will last in the battle for his mind for the length of time it will take to save him?”

“He told me he watched himself do it and couldn’t do anything about it,” she says. “If you skip over your intrepid, yet tragic love story to the part that’s relevant, maybe I’ll have the time to stop it before he has the chance to do that to me or anyone else again. History repeats itself when you don’t learn from it.”

She’s already been taught that through her and Allison, and Derek and Kate. It’s a lesson she wouldn’t mind repeating, if it doesn’t come at the cost of someone’s life.

 

 

They’re too late.

They’re too—

Mr. Argents puts her hand on her shoulder before pulling her into a hug, and lets Scout just stand there and shake.

 

 

Even though Isaac feels kind of funny in the head, he does what seems right and stumbles home. Melissa must still be at the hospital and he probably should’ve found her first, but Scout’s in her bedroom, wrapped in one of Stiles’ shirts. “Oh my god,” she says when she sees him, scrambling to stand up and run in front of him. “You’re okay? Should you really be out? Are you—”

He blinks. “I started healing all at once,” he answers. “If my doctor came in, I’d be fucked. What’s going on?”

Not all that surprisingly, she hugs him tight around the middle. Since she became an Alpha, she’s become a lot more touchy. “The nogitsune took over Stiles,” she says. “We figured out how to get him back, but it’s not going to easy.”

When she and Stiles are in the same room together, it’s the most sickeningly sweet thing in the world; they don’t deserve this. “Well, you got me now,” he says, even though his head feels fuzzy. “That’s one more set of claws.”

Pulling out of their hug, she answers, “Go get some sleep. Doing anything tonight is dangerous.”

“Yeah. You too, Scout.”

He lies down alone in the guest room bed without the accompanying sound Scout and Stiles’ childish whispering. The moment the nogitsune takes over his mind, too, is harsh and painful, and his last coherent thought is that he better not touch her.

 

 

Aiden is surprisingly gentle when he rolls Stiles up into his arms. “The McCall place, right?” he says. “I need to split and find my brother after, but I’ll get him inside.”

In his arms, Stiles looks small—pale and sick and boneless. “Thank you,” she tells him, and lightly touches Aiden’s arm before getting back into the driver’s seat. Despite being an ex-murderer werewolf, he’s better to her than Jackson ever was. “Really.”

He puts her friend in the back seat before getting back next to her. “You know,” he says, tone too forcibly casual, “I can help out for a few extra minutes, I guess.”

“Thank you,” she says again, and drives too fast all the way to Scout’s.

 

 

Considering that Isaac is missing and the nogitsune just gave that super cryptic message about the twins, Scout gives Allison a call to take care of it. Technically this is werewolf business, but there’s no way she’s leaving her boyfriend now, possessed or not.

And possessed or not, going into his mind feels like a serious invasion of privacy. The fact that they had to call Peter for help only makes it worse. At least she has Lydia, so she won’t be alone, but that doesn’t mean she was prepared to get strapped down to a bed. It feels like all her strength is sapped out of her too and she’s struggling like a normal human and really, she’s not surprised, because Stiles still seems to have this idea in his head that he has to protect her.

Then suddenly Lydia asks, “Do I actually need to remind you that you’re a werewolf?”

“We’re in Stiles’ head.”

“And you’re a supernatural creature with supernatural strength!” she says and this is Lydia, who’s smarter than everyone, so Scout might know Stiles better but she doesn’t argue. “ _Break free._ ”

It’s the hardest thing she’s done in a while, but she breaks free.

 

 

Allison has her hand in Scout’s hair and her lips are soft even though she doesn’t use chapstick. There’s a banging noise that’s freaking her out, but Allison is saying that everything’s okay, that they just have to be quiet.

“ _Lydia!_ ”

Oh god, that’s Peter, Scout realizes suddenly, and she pushes her ex-girlfriend away. “We’re not together.”

The way Allison’s looking at her, though, almost makes her doubt it. “What?” she says. “What do you mean?”

“We’re not together anymore,” Scout answers. “This is wrong. This is a trick. This is a trick.”

“ _Lydia!_ ”

Then she feels it, the blood, and when she reaches up she finds it dropping down her face. This, horrifyingly enough, isn’t hers, but Lydia’s. The whole room shakes, Allison screams, and Scout pushes through the closet and into a stark white room that looks too much like her afterlife. Lydia’s there, unharmed, and just as Scout gets to her she notices Stiles and a figure wrapped in bandages at the other end of wherever they are.

They run, and no matter how far they run, he and the figure never get any closer. When she shouts, they don’t even look up. She doesn’t recognize the game. “Stiles is part of your pack,” Lydia says suddenly, dropping so her hands are on her knees.

“What?” Scout says, confused, and looks at her. “What do you mean?”

Looking back, her friend answers, “He’s human, but he’s still part of the pack, right?”

Everyone refers to her group as her back, no matter what they are. That includes Lydia. Includes Allison, Stiles. At the very least she’s having sex with him. “Yeah. Yeah, of course.”

“How do wolves signal their location to the rest of their pack?”

Oh, well, that should have been obvious, she thinks, and shifts. Sometimes all she needs is Lydia as her healthy dose of reality. “They howl.”

Stiles looks up, the nogitsune looks up, and then her boyfriend knocks the game to the ground. The thing roars, and the pieces scatter across the floor.

 

 

“The pack’s going to find Lydia,” Scout says firmly as she shampoos his hair. Stiles woke up in a new body but with his own mind, wrapped in dusty bandages. Of course he wanted a shower. “They’re going to find her and while they’re looking, we’re going to make sure you’re okay.”

Realistically, he can clean himself, but she’s refusing to leave his side. “Why are you so sure this is really me?” he asks, because he’s doubtful of even himself.

As if it’s simple, she answers, “I know you. The nogitsune tries to get it right, but it just doesn’t move the same way as you, doesn’t talk the same way as you. Doesn’t even say my name right. Let’s face it: I know you better than I know my mom.”

Stiles leans down and kisses the top of her head. “I love you,” he says, because he feels like he doesn’t enough now and the thing inside him has already used her love for him as a way to taunt her. And that’s probably the least awful thing he did to her, or anyone.

“I love you too,” she says, and moves from his hair to his body with a bar of soap.

Right now they’re stupid teenagers in love, but even that shouldn’t be enough for her to forgive him.

 

 

Finding Lydia’s car in a deserted parking lot hurts, but at least Isaac says she’s angry, not afraid. Allison doesn’t want her best friend to be afraid, she already had to watch Peter drive her crazy last year. And last night she was with her girlfriend, and Kira was afraid, too, because they were trying to stay alive and keep three werewolves from killing each other.

Lately, Allison feels like the only thing she can do is _pretend_ to be brave. She also thinks she isn’t doing too good of a job.

 

 

When he says, “Please don’t do this,” Scout, of course, ignores him, and takes his hand anyway, removing the pain. “Seriously, haven’t you learned by now that this is a bad idea?”

Honestly, it feels good. Really good. But now he knows what it’s like to take pain too—ripped it out of her, more like, actually. Why couldn’t it be like the movies, where seeing his girlfriend hurt would be enough for him to overpower the thing inside his head? Instead he had to watch himself twist a sword around inside her. “I’m fine,” she says with a smile. “You’re not, though, so let’s make you better.”

Before Stiles can tell her that logic that simple won’t work, her phone rings and it’s Kira. Answering it forces her to release his hands, which is a relief no matter how much it hurts. “The girl’s at the school,” she says when she hangs up, standing. “I know you probably shouldn’t be out, but I’m not leaving you here.”

“I think I’m good enough to walk around,” he says, which is true. “Just do me a favor and blast the heat.”

“Yeah, sure,” she answers, “anything for you,” and he hates that she means it.

 

 

It clicks abrupt when she’s looking at the arrowhead next to the bullet. Dad said he’d used a few, said it was his first mission when he shot the oni. If it was his first mission, then he must’ve been using a silver bullet. Dad is the only one who’s even injured one of them.

But why didn’t the silver kill it?

Unless it healed itself because the bullet went straight through. Maybe all they need is something that will stick.

 

 

Lydia’s missing and Stiles is still potentially dying, so they don’t have time for this, but Scout’s, well, _angry._

“Mom told you to get out of the house, then, not get out of my life,” she says once her dad finishes his story, crossing her arms. “When you were drunk—yeah, it scared me, but you’re still my dad, I _loved_ you, and I spent years trying to figure out why you didn’t want me anymore. You haven’t touched a drink since? Awesome, I would’ve liked to have seen that, but instead I missed it, so I don’t want your apology. I don’t need it. I’ll see you at graduation or whenever you decided to show up again.”

He reaches out for her, says, “Scout,” with his tone pleading, but she’s already turning away. The last time they saw each other, she’d been with Stiles, who he tried telling Mom she was too dependent on, and she’d been crying. When she became a goddamn werewolf, she didn’t run away, so he can’t hide behind that excuse just because she fell down the stairs.

Without looking at him, she says, “Just get out. I’m in the middle of something.”

Thankfully, he doesn’t press for details for once. Instead he just leaves, and she doesn’t run upstairs until she hears the front door click shut behind him.

 

 

Allison is dying at seventeen and it isn’t beautiful, but it doesn’t hurt and if she had to die, this is how she’d want to go: protecting those who can’t protect themselves, Scout’s arms around her again. “Did you find her?” she asks. “Is she okay? Is she safe?”

Gently, Scout moves Allison’s hair out of her face as answers, “Yeah, she’s safe,” before reaching down to take her hand. “I—I can’t. I can’t take your pain.”

“That’s because it doesn’t hurt.” Scout’s hair is a mess on one side and the sleeve of her dress is torn, slipping off one shoulder. She smells like the Dove soap she uses and coconut shampoo and her eyes are that gorgeous red color from adrenaline.

Shaking her head, Scout says, “No,” because she knows what Allison is saying, that she’s dying and the pain is bleeding away. It doesn’t hurt, but she feels cold, and Scout is warm against her side.

“It’s okay.”

“Allison—”

Somehow, she smiles, and it isn’t too hard because this is Scout she’s looking at. “It’s okay,” she repeats. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It’s perfect.” And it is, even though it’s cold and she’s seventeen and it isn’t beautiful. “I’m in the arms of my first love. The first person I ever loved. The person I’ll always love.” Kira’s right there, her girlfriend’s right there, and now there’s Stiles, but this is the last chance she’ll ever have to say it. “I love you, Scout—Scout McCall.”

Scout’s shaking her head again, pressing so close down their foreheads are touching. “Allison, don’t,” she says. “Don’t, please—”

“You have to tell my dad,” Allison says because those arrows, those arrows are important, those arrows worked and no one knows. “You have to tell my dad—”

The last thing she feels is Scout kiss her and she’s seventeen and dying and it’s not beautiful, but still she thinks, I love you, Scout McCall.

 

 

Mr. Argent coaches her through what to say. It isn’t until after she’s got it down that he pulls her into another one of his hugs, tucked right beneath his chin, and lets her ball her hands up into his shirt.

“It happened so fast,” she says, and it isn’t for rehearsal.

He pets down her hair. “I know.”

“It happened so fast.”

The banshee’s hint was French for _love at first sight._

It all happened so fast.

 

 

Even though they weren’t together for very long, Kira had fallen for Allison hard. And now she’s gone, because of something Mom called for back in the fucking 1940s. When Stiles says, “Only good thing is it looks like I’m dying too,” she has to refrain from telling him to shut up. If he hadn’t noticed, Scout just lost Allison. She doesn’t need him to die, too.

More than that, even, Kira had to listen to her girlfriend, in her last moments, say she loved someone different. She’s not letting the person Allison loved lose anyone else.

 

 

They’re in Narnia. A deranged, fucked up Narnia where she’s supposed to kill her boyfriend.

She throws herself at the first oni without any sort of strategy, and the fight continues like that until Stiles pulls the sword on himself. “What if it saves you?” he says like an idiot, like she’s actually willing to risk having someone else she loves die in her arms. “What if it saves all of you?”

“What if it’s just another trick?” Lydia says, inching close but not too close.

Behind him, the nogitsune answers, “No more tricks, Lydia. End it, Scout. Let your boyfriend fall on his own sword. Do for him what he cannot do for himself. _Do it, Scout._ ”

Stiles’ hands are shaking. “Don’t!” she says, voice overlapping the nogitsune. “Not you, too, I can’t—”

“You have no moves left,” he says.

As Stiles suddenly moves the sword, he says, “Yeah, I do,” and throws Kira the sword. “A divine move.” The nogitsune hisses. “You have to stop fighting them, it’s an illusion. It looks real and it feels real, but you have to trust me, Scout, it’s an illusion.”

Because he’s Stiles—really Stiles—she does trust him, and turns around. The oni have their swords at the ready.

 

 

Scout bites down the nogitsune’s arm, eyes glowing red, and Kira stabs it through the heart.

For Allison, Lydia thinks, and watches Stiles’ body shatter like a porcelain doll.

 

 

After Aiden’s death, Scout sits down on the steps with Lydia curled up against her, crying into her arms, and Stiles wrapped around both of them. She’s already lost her best friend, and now she’s losing her boyfriend. The same thing almost happened to Scout, but didn’t. Who said it was okay for that to happen to Lydia but not to her?

This is how Derek, Mr. Argent, and Ethan find them, all tucked up inside each other. “I knew he was,” Lydia says when Derek tells that in the end, Aiden was one of the good guys. “Oh god, I knew he was.”

She leaves them, lets Ethan gather her up in his arms instead and Aiden hadn’t been in her pack, but Scout feels as if she “lost a limb” anyway. It was the same with Allison. Maybe it’s possible for True Alphas to have a different sort of pack. If so, hers is unraveling at the seam.

 

 

At some point during the time he was gone, Scout got fast; Rafael wouldn’t have caught her if it weren’t for the gurney coming around the corner at the same moment.

Right there in the decimated hospital waiting room, she struggles, trying to get to her mom who’s undergoing tests for blood toxicity and stitches, but it isn’t long until she stops, slumping against him. “I’ve just had a really hard day,” she says, half-sobbing, and Stiles finally enters too, along with their friend Lydia. Naturally the sheriff station had to get attacked as well as the hospital. “I just had a really, really hard day.”

Later, maybe, he’ll ask what happened, but not now. She lost Allison Argent, who was her ex-girlfriend, according to Melissa, and now has two people in the hospital. “The staff alive here really doesn’t want anyone around right now,” he tells her, rubbing her back, and makes eye contact with Stiles, who has circles under his eyes so dark they’re almost red. “How about I take you three back to your house? Both of your parents will be fine, and you can call your mom from there, Lydia.”

Scout nods, wiping away her tears, and looks over to her friend and her boyfriend, who gives a jerky nod. “Thank you for not letting Mom bleed out in the elevator,” she says, and moves away to takes hold of both Stiles’ and Lydia’s hands. The three of them look much older than sixteen and seventeen. He doesn’t know as much about his daughter as he shoulder, but he knows she had a main group of four and that was just cut down by one.

He really hopes she makes it out of this okay.

 

 

The day of Allison’s funeral has the audacity to be bright and sunny and warm for this time of year. Half the school turns up, but Ethan is already gone, not wanting to stick around long enough for those hunters to get to him. Kira cries silently into her mom’s shoulder, and Mr. Argent, Melissa, and Dad all stand together. Stiles holds Scout’s hand and Lydia’s, and Scout’s also holding Derek’s, and Lydia is also holding Isaac’s as they all sit in a row. It’s the pack, together, minus three. He hadn’t thought of the twins as part of the pack before but now that they’re gone, Stiles realizes he’d gotten used to them.

After, he doesn’t go home right away. Instead, he, Scout, and Lydia drive out to the Preserve, where they’ve spent so much of their time with Allison, and he can’t help but think that this is all his fault.

 

 

_Scout—_

_I needed to get away. I’ll be back. Just because I’m not nearby doesn’t mean I’ve left your pack._

_—Isaac_

 

 

This is the thing about their lives: despite Allison’s death, everyone else is so in the dark about everything that life continues on as normal. They go to school, they have homework do, they have jobs to get to. Not everyone can skip town like Isaac or Ethan.

It’s a Tuesday, two full weeks after everything is over and done with, and Scout kisses her boyfriend in the middle of doing econ homework. “I missed you,” she says after she moves away. “I know it’s late, but. I missed you.”

He pushes their books to the side and pulls her closer. “Yeah,” he answer. “I know. I missed you too.”

“I love you.” Allison didn’t say it to her until her absolute last breath and even though they weren’t dating and now she’s with Stiles, who she loves entirely, she knew she always _would_ love her, too. And she didn’t get a chance to say it.

If Stiles ever found out what Allison’s last words were, he hasn’t said anything. Instead he says, “I love you too, Scout,” and pulls her in for another kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! Maybe once season four hits I'll write another chapter, but for now, this is all. I hope you enjoy!

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed it! The next will come out soon. And I wrote the story all at once, for the most part, which is why the ending is kind of awkward


End file.
